H4HHHRH 


\       ,     \ 


University  of  California  •  Berkeley 

Purchased  as  the  gift  of 

HELLER  CHARITABLE 

AND 
EDUCATIONAL  FUND 


By  the  same  Author: 

SUBSTANCE  AND  SHADOW; 


OR, 


MOBILITY  AND  RELIGION  IN  THEIE  RELATION  TO  LIFE, 


SECOND   EDITION. 


FIELDS,  OSGOOD,  &  CO.,  Boston. 


THE 


SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG 


BEING  AN  ELUCIDATION  OF  HIS  DOCTRINE 

OF  THE   DIVINE   NATURAL 

HUMANITY. 


BY   HENRY    JAMES. 


BOSTON: 
FIELDS,   OSGOOD,   &    CO., 

SUCCESSORS  TO  TICKNOR  AND  FIELDS. 
1869. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1869,  by 

HENRY    JAMES, 
In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


UNIVERSITY  PRESS  :  WELCH,  BIGELOW,  &  Co., 
CAMBRIDGE. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


THE  following  essay  comprises  an  article  which  ap- 
peared in  the  North  American  Eeview  for  July  1867, 
and  a  large  amount  of  additional  matter.  I  had  not 
space  in  the  Eeview  to  do  more  than  enter  upon  a 
theme  previously  so  unwrought,  and  I  am  afraid  I  have 
done  it  only  scant  justice  since.  The  subject  is  one 
however  which  invites  and  will  well  reward  any  amount 
of  rehandling ;  and  I  cannot,  just  now  at  all  events,  > 
afford  the  time  to  treat  it  more  exhaustively.  I  am  con- 
tent to  have  outlined  it  in  so  conscientious  a  manner  as 
that  any  one  interested  may  easily  work  out  the  neces- 
sary details  for  himself;  so  I  leave  it  for  the  present. 

While  deism  as  an  intellectual  tradition  continues 
doubtless  to  survive,  it  seems  at  the  same  time  to  be 
losing  all  hold  upon  the  living  thought  of  men,  being 
trampled  under  foot  by  the  advance  of  a  scientific 
naturalism.  Paganism  and  science  are  indeed  plainly 
incompatible  terms.  The  conception  of  a  private  or 
unemployed  divine  force  in  the  world  —  the  concep- 
tion of  a  deity  unimplicated  in  the  nature,  the  progress, 
and  the  destiny  of  man  —  is  utterly  repugnant  to 
human  thought ;  and  if  such  a  conception  were  the  true 


iv  ADVERTISEMENT. 

logical  alternative  of  atheism,  science  would  erelong 
everywhere,  as  she  is  now  doing  in  Germany,  confess 
herself  atheistic.  But  the  true  battle-field  is  not  nearly 
so  narrow  as  this.  The  rational  alternative  of  atheism 
is  not  deism,  but  Christianity,  and  science  accordingly 
would  be  atheistic  at  a  very  cheap  if  not  wholly  gratui- 
tous rate,  should  it  become  so  only  to  avoid  the  deistic 
hypothesis  of  creation.  The  deistic  hypothesis  then 
is  effectually  dead  and  buried  for  scientific  purposes. 
That  it  is  rapidly  becoming  so  even  for  the  needs  of  the 
religious  instinct  also,  we  have  a  lively  augury  furnished 
us  in  the  current  popularity  of  two  very  naive  and 
amiable  religious  books,  which  unconsciously  put  a  new 
face  upon  the  atheistic  controversy  by  attempting  to 
give  revelation  itself  a  strictly  rational  aspect,  and  so 
bring  it  within  the  legitimate  domain  of  science.  One 
of  these  books  is  named  Ecce  Homo,  the  other  Ecce 
Deus.  They  are  both  of  them  interesting  in  them- 
selves, but  much  more  so,  I  think,  as  indicating  a  certain 
progress  in  religious  thought,  which  tends  to  the  dis- 
owning of  any  deity  out  of  strictly  human  proportions, 
out  of  the  proportions  of  our  own  nature ;  or,  what  is 
the  same  thing,  tends  to  disallow  all  personal  and  admit 
only  a  spiritual  infinitude,  which  is  the  infinitude  of 
character.  I  for  my  own  part  rejoice  extremely  in  this 
brightening  of  our  intellectual  skies.  I  hope  the  day  is 
now  no  longer  so  distant  as  once  it  seemed,  when  the 
idle,  pampered,  and  mischievous  force  which  men  have 
everywhere  superstitiously  worshipped  as  divine,  and 
sought  to  placate  by  all  manner  of  cruel,  slavish,  and 
mercenary  observances,  may  be  utterly  effaced  in  the 


AD  VER  TISEMENT.  v 

resurrection  lineaments  of  that  spotless  unfriended 
youth,  who  in  the  world's  darkest  hour  allied  his  own 
godward  hopes  with  the  fortunes  only  of  the  most  de- 
filed, the  most  diseased,  the  most  disowned  of  human 
kind,  and  so  for  the  first  and  only  time  on  earth 
avouched  a  breadth  in  the  meanest  human  bosom 
every  way  fit  to  house  and  domesticate  the  infinite 
divine  love.  Long  before  Christ,  the  lover  had  freely 
bled  for  his  mistress,  the  friend  for  his  friend,  the  parent 
for  his  child,  the  patriot  for  his  country.  History 
shows  no  record  however  of  any  but  him  steadfastly 
choosing  death  at  the  hands  of  fanatical  self-seeking 
men,  lest  ty  simply  consenting  to  live  he  should  become 
the  object  of  their  filthy  and  fulsome  devotion.  In 
other  words,  many  a  man  had  previously  illustrated  the 
creative  benignity  in  every  form  of  passionate  self-sur- 
render and  self-sacrifice.  He  alone,  in  the  teeth  of  every 
passionate  impulse  known  to  the  human  heart  —  that 
is  to  say,  in  sheer  despite  of  every  tie  of  familiarity,  of 
friendship,  of  country,  of  religion,  that  ordinarily  makes 
life  sweet  and  sacred  —  surrendered  himself  to  death 
in  clear,  unforced,  spontaneous  homage  to  universal 
love. 

But  then  it  must  be  frankly  admitted  on  the  other 
hand  that  a  certain  adverse  omen  declares  itself  in  the 
religious  arena;  not  however  among  the  positive  or 
doctrinal  orthodox  sort,  so  much  as  among  those  of  a 
negative  or  sentimental  Unitarian  hue.  It  is  fast  grow- 
ing a  fashion,  for  example,  among  our  so-called  "  radi- 
cal "  religious  contemporaries,  vehemently  to  patronize 
Christ's  humanity,  by  way  of  more  effectually  discoun- 


AD  VER  TISEMENT. 


tenancing  his  conventional  divine  repute.  I  too  dis- 
like the  altogether  musty  and  incoherent  divinity  as- 
cribed to  Christ  by  the  church  —  a  divinity  which  is 
intensely  accidental  and  no  way  incidental  to  his  ineffa- 
bly tempted,  suffering,  and  yet  victorious  spiritual  man- 
hood. But  it  is  notoriously  bad  policy  to  confirm 
one's  self  in  a  mere  negative  attitude  of  mind,  especially 
on  questions  of  such  intellectual  pith  and  moment  as 
this,  and  I  therefore  caution  the  movers  of  the  new  cru- 
sade to  bethink  themselves  in  time,  whether,  after  all, 
the  only  divinity  which  is  capable  of  permanent  recog- 
nition at  men's  hands  must  not  necessarily  wear  their 
own  form  ?  I  find  myself  incapable,  for  my  own  part,  of 
honoring  the  pretension  of  any  deity  to  my  allegiance, 
who  insists  upon  standing  eternally  aloof  from  my  own 
nature,  and  by  that  fact  confesses  himself  personally 
incommensurate  and  unsympathetic  with  my  basest, 
most  sensuous,  and  controlling  personal  necessities.  It 
is  an  easy  enough  thing  to  find  a  holiday  God  who  is 
all  too  selfish  to  be  touched  with  the  infirmities  of  his 
own  creatures  —  a  God,  for  example,  who  has  naught  to 
do  but  receive  assiduous  court  for.  a  work  of  creation 
done  myriads  of  ages  ago,  and  which  is  reputed  to  have 
cost  him  in  the  doing  neither  pains  nor  patience, 
neither  affection  nor  thought,  but  simply  the  utterance 
of  a  dramatic  word  ;  and  who  is  willing,  accordingly,  to 
accept  our  decorous  Sunday  homage  in  ample  quit- 
tance of  obligations  so  unconsciously  incurred  on  our 
part,  so  lightly  rendered  and  so  penuriously  sanctioned 
on  his.  Every  sect,  every  nation,  every  family  almost, 
offers  some  pet  idol  of  this  description  to  your  worship. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


But  I  am  free  to  confess  that  I  have  long  outgrown  this 
loutish  conception  of  deity.  I  can  no  longer  bring  my- 
self to  adore  a  characteristic  activity  in  the  God  of  my 
worship,  which  falls  below  the  secular  average  of  human 
character.  In  fact,  what  I  crave  with  all  my  heart 
and  understanding  —  what  my  very  flesh  and  bones 
cry  out  for  —  is  no  longer  a  Sunday  but  a  week-day 
divinity,  a  working  God,  grimy  with  the  dust  and 
sweat  of  our  most  carnal  appetites  and  passions,  and 
bent,  not  for  an  instant  upon  inflating  our  worthless 
pietistic  righteousness,  but  upon  the  patient,  toilsome, 
thorough  cleansing  of  our  physical  and  moral  exist- 
ence from  the  odious  defilement  it  has  contracted, 
until  we  each  and  all  present  at  last  in  body  and  mind 
the  deathless  effigy  of  his  own  uncreated  loveliness. 
And  no  clear  revelation  do  I  get  of  such  a  God  outside 
the  personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  would  be  gross  affec- 
tation then  in  me  at  least  to  doubt  that  he,  whom  all 
men  in  the  exact  measure  of  their  own  veracious  man- 
hood acknowledge  and  adore  as  supreme  among  men, 
will  always  continue  to  smile  at  the  simulated  homage 
—  at  the  purely  voluntary  or  calculated  deference  — 
which  is  paid  to  any  unknown  or  unrevealed  and 
transcendental  deus,  who  is  yet  too  superb  to  subside 
into  the  dimensions  of  his  sacred  human  worth. 

CAMBEIDGE,  MASS.,  January,  1869. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Creation  the  fundamental  problem  of  philosophy.  —  Difficulties  of  the 
problem.  —  Kant's  attempt  to  reconcile  them.  —  A  supernatural  creation, 
that  is,  a  creation  which  does  not  conform  to  the  order  and  methods  of 
nature,  inconceivable.  —  The  moral  hypothesis  of  creation  untenable.  — 
Morality  not  a  creative  end,  but  only  a  creative  means.  —  Swedenborg  and 
Hegel  contrasted.  —  Swedenborg's  analysis  of  consciousness,  estabiisning 
the  superiority  of  its  objective  to  its  subjective  element,  and  giving  the 
key  to  the  philosophy  of  creation,  in  his  doctrine  of  the  lord,  or  maximus 
homo.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  t  .  .  .  1  —  11 

CHAPTER  I. 

Swedenborg's  private  history  and  intellectual  character.  —  His  biography, 
by  William  White.  —  His  doctrine  of  the  lord,  or  divine  natural  human- 
ity, briefly  stated 11-15 

CHAPTER  II. 

Creation,  according  to  Swedenborg,  is  a  composite,  not  a  simple,  move- 
ment, being  bound  to  provide  the  creature  with  subjective  or  conscious 
existence  no  less  than  objective  or  unconscious  being.  —  The  truth  of 
creation  wholly  contingent  upon  the  truth  of  the  creature's  identity.  —  Our 
subjective  existence,  or  constitutional  identity,  just  as  indispensable  to  our 
objective  individuality,  or  the  being  we  have  in  God,  as  the  marble  is  to 
the  statue,  or  the  mother  to  the  child.  —  Creation  is  practically  a  forma- 
tive or  redemptive  process,  exhibiting  such  a  sheer  immersion  and  obscur- 
ation of  creative  substance  in  created  form  as  will  insure  the  eventual 
transfiguration  of  that  form  with  all  divine  perfection.  How  shall  creation 
ever  be  seen  to  justify  this  pretension  ?  —  Here  it  is  that  what  Swedenborg 
calls  the  opening  of  his  spiritual  sight,  and  his  consequent  discovery  of  the 
internal  sense  of  the  Scriptures,  makes  itself  available.  —  The  literal  sense 
of  Scripture  alone  is  doctrinal.  —  The  spiritual  sense  is  not  another  literal 
or  doctrinal,  but  a  living  or  spiritual  sense,  having  no  relation  to  time, 
space,  or  person,  and  incapable,  therefore,  of  being  learned  by  rote,  or 
being  ritually  administered .  .  .  15-19 

CHAPTER  III. 

It  is,  therefore,  idle  to  conceive  of  the  new  or  living  church  as  a  new 
ecclesiasticism,  in  antagonism  with  those  already  existing.  —  The  new 


X  CONTENTS. 

church  is  based  upon  the  truth  of  the  divine  NATURAL  humanity,  and 
hence  has  no  recognition  of  a  deity  outside  of  the  conditions  of  human 
nature.  —  The  incarnation  is  a  domestication  of  the  divine  perfection  in 
human  nature,  and  through  that  in  animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral.  — 
Swedenborg  illustrates  this  truth  rather  than  argues  it.  —  Distinction 
between  living  and  dead  truth,  or  truths  of  conscience  which  belong  to 
the  life,  and  truths  of  science  which  belong  to  the  memory.  —  Sweden- 
borg's  doctrine  of  nature  —  Nature  exists  only  to  sense,  and  has  no 
rational  reality.  —  Thus  it  is  a  purely  phenomenal  or  apparitional  world, 
although  in  the  infancy  of  our  intelligence  we  suppose  it  to  be  the  only 
reality,  and  are  incapable  of  lifting  our  thought  above  it.  — We  suppose 
creation  accordingly  to  be  a  physical  achievement  of  God,  —  a  magical  ex- 
hibition of  his  power  in  space  and  time,  whereas  it  is  a  wholly  spiritual 
operation  in  the  sphere  of  human  affection  and  thought.  —  Philosophy  de- 
mands consequently  that  we  allow  nature  only  a  subjective  force,  or  re- 
gard it  as  strict  involution  of  the  human  mind.  ...  20-25 

CHAPTEE  IV. 

The  same  subject  continued  and  illustrated.  —  Sweden borg's  vindication  of 
nature  and  the  part  it  plays  in  creation.  —  The  divine  love  and  wisdom  can- 
not but  be  and  exist  in  other  beings  or  existences  created  from  itself;  and 
nature  is  the  logical  background  of  such  existences,  as  giving  them  self- 
consciousness. —  Remarkable  definition  of  love.  —  Consists  in  one's  wil- 
ling what  is  one's  own  to  be  another's,  and  feeling  another's  delight  as 
one's  own.  —  Other  quotations  from  Swedenborg.  —  If  love  be  of  this 
essentially  unselfish  quality,  the  creative  love  must  be  infinitely  pure; 
binding  the  creator  to  make  himself  over  without  stint  to  the  creature,  or 
to  allow  the  latter  to  effloresce  in  all  his  native  selfishness  and  worldliness, 
to  the  utmost  limit  compatible  with  his  eventual  spiritual  reaction  towards 
the  creator.  —  Creation  is  the  practical  immersion  consequently  of  crea- 
tive perfection  in  created  imperfection,  so  that  the  more  the  creator  alone 
is,  the  more  the  creature  alone  appears.  Hence  the  origin  of  nature.  It 
expresses  the  obligation  the  creature  is  under  to  appropriate  the  creator, 
or  to  make  him  his  own.  It  is  the  nuptial  couch  of  creator  and  creature ; 
the  marriage  ring  that  consecrates  the  espousals  of  infinite  and  finite. 
Thus  its  virtue  is  purely  ceremonial,  shadowy,  reflective,  as  giving  the 
creature  —  not  being  —  but  self-consciousness,  or  such  an  appearance  of 
being  as  may  eventually  induct  him  into  the  acquaintance  of  being 
itself.  .  .  .  .  25-31 


CHAPTER  V. 

closer  exposition  of  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  creation.  —  The  law  of 
the  creature's  subjective  constitution.  — Nature  the  realm  neither  of  being 
nor  of  not  being,  but  of  existence,  and  hence  the  tertium  quid  of  which 
philosophy  has  always  been  in  search  to  reconcile  God  and  man.  It  is 
not  the  spiritual  creation  itself,  but  the  shadow  of  it  projected  upon  a 
finite  intelligence.  —  Our  intelligence  conditioned  upon  nature.  —  Swe- 
denborg makes  nature  a  theatre  of  revelation  exclusively,  and  denies  it  any 
other  worth.  .  V  ''..,  .  .  31-37 


CONTENTS.  XI 


CHAPTER  VL 

Swedenborg  not  properly  chargeable  with  pantheistic  or  idealist  tendencies ; 
being  separated  from  them  by  his  doctrine  of  creation,  which  makes  nature 
no  being  but  only  a  seeming,  no  substance  but  only  a  shadow.  ;  38-40 

CHAPTER  VII. 

The  nature  of  selfhood  or  proprium.  —  What  is  meant  by  man  being  said  to 
be  created  male  and  female.  —  What  it  is  to  be  an  image  of  God.  —  It  is 
to  be  an  inverse  or  negative  representation  of  the  divine  perfection.  40  -  47 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

Creator  and  creature  subjectively  opposed,  the  one  possessing  all  fulness  in 
himself,  the  other  being  destitute  of  everything.  —  To  give  natural  form 
or  selfhood  to  the  creature  is  to  vivify  the  infinite  void  he  is  in  himself,  or 
render  him  conscious  of  it.  —  Our  natural  creation,  then,  without  our  sub- 
sequent spiritual  redemption,  would  be  a  great  blemish  upon  the  divine 
name.  —  The  male  and  female  man,  the  homo  and  the  vir,  constitute  the 
machinery  of  that  redemption,  —  the  one  representing  the  universal  or 
created  element,  the  other  the  individual  or  creative  one,  and  their  mar- 
riage constituting  human  society  or  fellowship,  in  which  the  redemption  of 
our  nature  is  complete.  —  The  mistakes  of  philosophy  in  this  direction. 
—  The  angel  would  gladly  be  without  selfhood  if  he  could.  .  .  47-51 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Why  the  creative  love  wears  of  necessity  an  aspect  of  crucifixion  to  our  regard. 
Because  we,  being  created  existences,  are  forms  of  self-love,  and  self-love 
can  only  recognize  pure  love  under  a  form  of  opposition  to  itself,  that  is, 
when  it  appears  to  deny  self,  instead  of  favor  it.  —  Nature  a  descending 
life  of  God  in  man,  history  an  ascending  one.  They  are  both  alike 
mere  portals  of  the  spiritual  world,  nature  reflecting  to  our  spiritual  or 
cultivated  intelligence  that  inward  absorption  of  infinite  in  finite  which  is 
necessary  to  the  finite  becoming  outwardly  clad  with  infinite  lustre. 
Hence  the  antagonism  in  human  nature  of  the  public  and  private  life,  the 
reconciliation  of  these  things  constituting  our  redemption,  or  social 
destiny. 51-57 

CHAPTER  X. 

History  resolves  itself  into  the  existence  of  the  church  on  earth,  which  means 
a  divine  purgation  of  human  nature.  —  Self-love  and  the  love  of  the  world 
religiously  consecrated  ab  initio,  because  out  of  them  as  an  earth  will 
eventually  spring  the  loves  of  goodness  and  truth  which  unite  man  spirit- 
ually with  God.  —  God  never  quarrels  with  his  creature  for  his  moral 
defects,  but  accepts  them  cordially  as  the  needful  purchase  of  his  spiritual 
mercy.  —  His  love  or  mercy  is  the  salvation  of  the  whole  human  race 
from  spiritual  poverty,  and  he  has  no  quarrel  with  any  but  the  reputed 
rich  or  righteous,  who  claim  his  mercy  to  themselves.  —  Thus  heaven  and 
hell  are  conditioned  upon  a  church  on  earth,  which,  outwardly  professing 


x  CONTENTS. 

to  love  God  and  the  neighbor,  inwardly  loves  self  and  the  world.  —  The 
devil  is  the  man  in  whom  ritual  religion,  or  the  church-consciousness,  is 
at  its  highest;  the  angel  is  the  man  in  whom  it  is  at  its  lowest.  —  Does 
Swedenborg  report  an  absolute  contrariety  between  heaven  and  hell,  or  a 
contingent  one  ?  Citation  of  passages  from  Swedenborg  bearing  upon 
this-topic.  V 57-64 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Heaven  and  hell,  as  contrasted  issues  of  human  destiny,  totally  unintelligible, 
if  nature  is  regarded  as  the  sphere  of  being  or  substance,  and  not  ex- 
clusively as  that  of  appearance  or  shadow.  —  Swedenborg  utterly  rejects 
it  as  having  any  ontological  bearing,  and  restricts  all  its  issues,  therefore, 
celestial  and  infernal  alike,  to  a  servile  revelation  of  the  truth,  hitherto 
discredited,  or  rather  unsuspected,  of  God's  natural  humanity.  —  The 
necessity  of  revelation  fundamental  to  creation.  —  What  does  revelation 
mean?  Differs  from  information. — An  unrevealed  God  is  practically 
no  God.  —  No  direct  or  immediate  knowledge  of  God  practicable  to  us, 
save  upon  the  basis  of  a  previous  mediate  one.  This  truth  demonstrated 
from  the  limitations  of  knowledge. 64-71 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Method  of  the  divine  revelation  very  gradual,  beginning  with  the  family, 
and  ending  with  the  social,  unity  of  man ;  a  temporary  or  provisional 
form  of  it  being  supplied  by  the  conventional  society  called  the  church. — 
The  church,  as  a  visible  or  ritual  economy,  has  never  had  any  real  but 
only  a  representative  worth ;  and  at  the  present  time  is  sadly  behind  "  the 
world"  in  spiritual  intelligence.  But  it  has  had  an  inestimable  use  in  keep- 
ing alive  men's  conscience  of  unrest  towards  God,  and  so  preparing  the  way 
for  his  consummate  achievement  in  our  nature,  which  is  the  evolution  of 
the  SOCIAL  sentiment.  —  Swedenborg's  conception  of  the  technical  church. 
Has  no  quarrel  with  the  persons  composing  it,  but  only  with  its  un- 
righteous animus 71-79 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

The  purely  negative  office  of  the  church  in  history  illustrated  and  argued, 

from  reason  and  scripture.       .  '     .        • 79-85 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

Nature  and  history  of  no  account  in  themselves,  or  on  independent  grounds, 
but  only  as  furnishing  a  theatre  for  God's  revelation  of  himself  in  hu- 
manity. —  Swedenborg's  intellectual  advantage  here  over  the  ordinary 
religionist  and  scientific  rationalist.  /  .  .  .  .  .  85-90 

CHAPTER  XV. 

Philosophy  of  the  religious  instinct.  —  The  religious  life  —  where  it  is  not  a 
mere  ritual  luxury  —  is  a  sincere  effort  of  the  worshipper  to  reconcile  the 
divine  holiness  to  his  selfishness  and  worldliness,  and  hence  is  fertile  only 


CONTENTS.  Xlll 

in  anguish  of  conscience  ;  because  the  divine  purpose  is  to  exhaust  self- 
ishness and  worldliness  as  factors  of  human  nature,  by  endowing  man 
with  an  exclusively  social  and  esthetic  or  productive  consciousness.  — 
The  moral  instinct.  — Morality  the  badge  of  human  nature,  or  what  man 
has  only  in  common  with  others,  and  not  in  distinction  from  them.  —  Op- 
posed, therefore,  to  spirituality,  because  the  individual  element  in  it  is  in 
bondage  to  the  universal  element.  —  Our  natural  regeneration  contingent 
upon  the  marriage  of  these  two  elements,  whereby  the  former  becomes 
exalted  to  the  first  place,  and  the  latter  deposed.  —  Sifting  function  of  the 
church.  —  Heaven  and  hell ;  their  subjective  antagonism,  and  objective 
harmony,  in  the  divine  natural  humanity 90-99 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

Transition  from  the  ritual  to  the  real  church.  How  effected.  Elements  of 
the  problem.  Swedenborg's  solution  of  it.  —  Utterly  irreconcilable 
opposition  otherwise  between  science  and  faith.  —  Illustrations.  .  100-105 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

Bearing  of  Swedenborg's  disclosures  upon  our  existing  controversies.  All 
these  controversies  proceed  upon  the  tacit  assumption  of  nature's  abso- 
luteness, while  Swedenborg  makes  it  a  strict  involution  of  man.  —  Man,  or 
moral  existence,  the  culmination  of  nature.  —  Moral  differences  between 
men  accordingly  do  not  argue  any  corresponding  spiritual  differences.  — 
Morality  distinguishes  man  from  the  brute,  and  identifies  him  with  his 
fellow.  —  What  dignity  it  confers  consequently  does  not  accrue  to  the 
individual  subject  of  it,  but  to  his  nature.  —  It  is  intended  to  base  the 
sentiment  of  fellowship  or  kind-ness  among  men,  and  so  promote  the  social 
destiny  of  the  race.  —  This  sentiment  of  kind-ness  unknown  to  the  animal. 
—  Our  social  destiny,  or  the  marriage  of  the  divine  and  human  natures, 
hinges  upon  the  universal  element  in  existence  becoming  secondary  and 
subservient  to  the  individual  element. 105-111 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

No  miracle  possible  on  Swedenborg's  principles,  provided  miracle  involves  a  vio- 
lation of  the  laws  of  nature.  —  Our  ignorance  of  natural  law  the  only  reason 
for  that  imagination.  —  Christ's  nativity.  —  The  creative  law  explained 
and  enforced.  —  The  visible  universe  not  the  true  or  spiritual  creation,  but 
only  a  lively  image  or  correspondence  of  it  to  a  sensibly  organized  intel- 
ligence. —  Swedenborg's  practical  attitude  towards  our  existing  contro- 
versies. —  They,  both  sides  alike,  make  nature  a  divine  terminus  ;  Swe- 
denborg makes  it  a  mere  starting-point  of  the  creative  energy.  .  111-120 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

Fundamental  discrepancy  between  Messrs.  Mansel  and  Mill,  for  example,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  Swedenborg  on  the  other.  One  party  supposes  nature 
to  be  a  substantive  work  of  God  achieved  in  space  and  time,  and  being, 
therefore,  its  own  nxison  d'etre ;  the  other  regards  it  as  a  mere  phenomenal 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

manifestation,  or  correspondence  to  sense,  of  a  spiritual  work  of  God 
transacting  in  the  realm  of  mind.  —  Nature  to  Swedenborg  has  no 
ontological  significance.  —  Creation  a  marriage-tie  between  creator  and 
creature 120-127 

CHAPTER  XX. 

Further  exposition  of  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  nature.  —  Creation  subservient 
to  redemption.  —  The  church  the  symbol  of  this  subserviency.  —  The 
church  utterly  unintelligent  as  to  its  own  nature  and  offices.  Has  al- 
ways identified  itself  with  man's  selfishness  and  covetousness,  and,  by 
obstinately  claiming  a  divine  sanction  to  these  things,  awakens  at  length 
a  spiritual  reaction  towards  God  in  the  secular  bosom,  which  is  tantamount 
to  our  natural  regeneration. 127-135 

CHAPTER   XXI. 

The  homo  and  the  vir.  The  one  unconscious,  the  other  conscious.  God 
creates  the  homo,  and  begets  the  vir.  —  Exposition  of  consciousness.  — 
The  vir,  or  moral  man,  divinely  begotten  of  the  homo,  or  physical  man.  — 
The  moral  world  involves  the  physical,  and  is  evolved  by  it,  as  form  is 
evolved  by  substance.  —  The  generic  or  identical  element  in  all  existence 
phenomenal  or  fallacious,  the  specific  or  individual  element  real.  —  The 
method  of  extrication  of  the  vir  from  the  homo 135  -  142 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

The  logical  situation  out  of  which  the  preceding  question  proceeds.  —  The 
sphere  of  God's  creative  action,  strictly  speaking,  is  identical  with  the 
physical  realm.  —  He  creates  the  homo  alone,  but  he  begets  the  vir.  —  Adam 
impotent  and  imbecile  until  vivified  by  Eve.  —  How  does  the  vir  or  moral 
man  become  born  of  the  homo  or  physical  man  ?  Through  the.  instrumen- 
tality of  conscience.  —  Conscience  is  the  spirit  of  God  in  the  created 
nature,  seeking  to  become  the  creature's  own  spirit.  —  Exposition  of 
conscience 142-157 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

Further  exposition  of  conscience.  It  masks  the  actual  divine  presence  itself 
in  human  nature.  It  is  a  foe  to  our  moral  or  infinite  righteousness,  being 
intended  to  superinduce  a  spiritual  or  infinite  one  upon  us.  —  The  social 
bearings  of  conscience.  It  derives  all  its  force  from  the  fact  that  my 
spiritual  relation  to  God  involves,  incidentally  to  itself,  my  relation  to 
my  own  kind  or  nature;  and  this  latter  relation  must  be  adjusted  before 
the  former  avouches  itself  satisfied 157-169 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

The  author's  intellectual  experience  before  and  after  his  acquaintance  with 
Swedenborg.  —  Conflict  between  letter  and  spirit.  —  The  deistic  and 
revealed  notion  of  God. 170-180 


CONTENTS.  XV 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

Superiority  of  the  objective  to  the  subjective  element  in  existence.  The 
former  qualitative,  the  latter  quantitative.  Fallacies  popularly  enter- 
tained on  this  subject.  —  Creation  inconceivable  on  any  other  hypothesis. 
—  Creator  and  creature  strictly  correlated  existences.  —  Creation  impos- 
sible, consequently,  unless  such  a  practical  equation  of  the  two  take  place, 
as  that  the  higher  nature  merge  itself  in  the  lower.  .  .  .  .  180-191 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

The  sole  philosophic  function  of  nature  to  furnish  a  logical  background  or 
basis  to  the  mind  in  its  approaches  towards  God.  —  Swedenborg  vacates 
the  entire  ontologic  problem  by  insisting  upon  the  literal  veracity  of 
creation.  —  Man  alone  is  by  God,  and  nature  is  a  mere  implication  of 
man ;  a  mere  shadow  or  reflection  of  the  infinite  and  eternal  being  he 
alone  has  in  God.  —  Conclusion.  —  Application  of  the  principles  estab- 
lished in  the  essay  to  idealism 191-203 


APPENDIX. 

NOTES  A  to  H 207-238 

POSTSCRIPT  239-243 


THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 


THE  fundamental  problem  of  Philosophy  is  the  problem  of 
creation.  Does  our  existence  really  infer  a  divine  and  infinite 
being,  or  does  it  not  ?  This  question  addresses  itself  to  us  now 
with  special  emphasis,  inasmuch  as  speculative  minds  are  begin- 
ning zealously  to  inquire  whether  creation  can  really  be  admitted 
any  longer,  save  in  an  accommodated  sense  of  the  word ;  wheth- 
er men  of  simple  faith  have  not  gone  too  far  in  professing  to  see 
a  hand  of  power  in  the  universe  absolutely  distinct  from  the  uni- 
verse itself.  That  being  can  admit  either  of  increase  or  diminu- 
tion is  philosophically  inconceivable,  and  affronts  moreover  the 
truth  of  the  creative  infinitude.  For  if  God  be  infinite,  as  we 
necessarily  hold  him  to  be  in  deference  to  our  own  fmiteness, 
what  shall  add  to,  or  take  from,  the  sum  of  his  being  ?  It  is  in- 
deed obvious  that  God  cannot  create  or  give  being  to  what  has 
being  in  itself,  for  this  would  be  contradictory.  He  can  create 
only  what  is  devoid  of  being  in  itself:  this  is  manifest.  And  yet 
what  is  void  of  being  in  itself  can  at  best  only  appear  to  be.  It 
can  be  no  real,  but  only  a  phenomenal  existence.  Thus  the  prob- 
lem of  creation  is  seen  to  engender  many  speculative  doubts. 
How  reconcile  the  antagonism  of  real  and  phenomenal,  of  ab- 
solute and  contingent,  of  which  the  problem  is  so  full  ?  By  the 
hypothesis  of  creation,  the  creature  derives  all  he  is  from  the 
creator.  But  the  creature  is  essentially  not  the  creator,  is  above 
all  things  himself  a  created  being,  and  therefore  the  utter  and 
exact  opposite  of  the  creator.  How  then  shall  the  infinite  crea- 
tor give  his  finite  creature  projection,  endow  him  with  veritable 
selfhood  or  identity,  and  yet  experience  no  compromise  of  his 
own  individuality  ?  Suffice  it  to  say  that  what  has  hitherto  called 
itself  Philosophy  has  had  so  little  power  fairly  to  confront  these 
difficulties,  let  alone  solve  them,  as  to  have  set  Kant  upon  the 


2  THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

notion  of  placating  them  afresh  by  the  old  recipe  of  Idealism  ; 
that  is,  by  the  invention  of  another  or  noumenal  world,  the  world 
of  "  things-in-themselves."  No  doubt  this  was  a  new  pusilla- 
nimity on  the  part  of  Philosophy,  but  what  better  could  the  phi- 
losopher do  ?  He  saw  plainly  enough  that  things  were  phenom- 
enal ;  but  as  he  did  not  see  that  this  infirmity  attached  to  them 
wholly  on  their  subjective  or  constitutional  side,  while  on  their 
objective  or  creative  side  they  were  infinite  and  absolute,  he  was 
bound  to  lapse  into  mere  idealism  or  scepticism,  unrelieved  by 
aught  but  the  dream  of  a  noumenal  background. 

We  may  smile  if  we  please  at  the  superstitious  shifts  to  which 
Kant's  philosophic  scepticism  reduced  him  ;  but  after  all,  Kant 
was  only  the  legitimate  flower  of  all  the  inherited  culture  of  the 
world,  the  helpless  logical  outcome  of  bewildered  ages  of  phi- 
losophy. Philosophy  herself  had  never  discriminated  the  objec- 
tive or  absolute  and  creative  element  in  knowledge  from  its  sub- 
jective or  merely  contingent  and  constitutional  element.  And 
when  Kant  essayed  to  make  the  discrimination,  what  wonder 
that  he  only  succeeded  in  more  hopelessly  confounding  the  two, 
and  so  adjourning  once  more  the  hope  of  Philosophy  to  an  in- 
definite future  ?  But  Kant's  failure  to  vindicate  the  philosophic 
truth  of  creation  has  only  exasperated  the  intellectual  discontent 
of  the  world  with  the  cosmological  data  supplied  by  the  old  the- 
ologies. Everywhere  men  of  far  more  tender  and  reverential 
make  even  than  Kant  are  being  driven  to  freshness  of  thought ; 
and  thought,  though  a  remorseless  solvent,  has  no  reconstructive 
power  over  truth.  Men's  opinions  are  being  silently  modified  in 
fact,  whether  they  will  or  not.  The  crudities,  the  extravagan- 
ces, the  contradictions  of  the  old  cosmology,  now  no  longer 
amiable  and  innocent,  but  aggressive  and  overbearing,  are  com- 
pelling inquiry  into  new  channels,  are  making  it  no  longer  possi- 
ble that  the  notions  which  satisfied  the  fathers  shall  continue  to 
satisfy  the  children.  A  distinctly  supernatural  creation,  once  so 
fondly  urged  upon  our  faith,  is  quite  unintelligible  to  modern 
culture,  because  it  violates  experience  or  contradicts  our  observa- 
tion of  nature.  Everything  we  observe  in  nature  implies  to  our 
understanding  a  common  or  identical  substance,  being  itself  a 
particular  or  individual  form  of  such  substance.  If  then  the  ob- 
jective form  of  things  were  an  outward  or  supernatural  com- 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  3 

munication  to  them,  it  would  no  longer  be  their  own  form,  inas- 
much as  it  would  lack  all  subjective  root,  all  natural  basis,  and 
confess  itself  an  imposition.  Thus,  on  the  hypothesis  of  a  su- 
pernatural creation,  every  natural  object  would  disclaim  a  nat- 
ural genesis  ;  and  nature,  consequently,  as  denoting  the  univer- 
sal or  subjective  element  in  existence,  would  disappear  with  the 
disappearance  of  her  proper  forms. 

Now  if  nature,  in  her  most  generic  or  universal  mood,  return 
us  at  best  a  discouraging  answer  to  the  old  problem  of  creation, 
what  answer  does  she  yield  in  her  most  specific  —  which  is  the 
human  or  moral  —  form  ?  A  still  more  discouraging  one  even  I 
In  fact,  the  true  motive  of  the  intellectual  hostility  now  formu- 
lating to  the  traditional  notion  of  creation,  as  an  instantaneous 
or  magical  exhibition  of  the  divine  power,  as  an  arbitrary  or 
irrational  procedure  of  the  divine  wisdom  —  by  which  the  uni- 
versal or  substantial  element  in  existence  is  made,  by  a  summary 
outward  fiat,  to  involve  its  higher  or  individual  and  formal  ele- 
ment —  is  supplied  by  our  moral  consciousness,  by  the  irresist- 
ible conviction  we  feel  of  our  personal  identity.  That  moral  or 
personal  existence  should  be  outwardly  generated,  should  be 
created  in  the  sense  of  having  being  communicated  to  it  super- 
naturally,  contradicts  consciousness.  For  moral  or  personal  ex- 
istence is  purely  conscious  or  subjective  existence,  and  conscious- 
ness or  subjectivity  is  a  strictly  natural  style  of  existence,  and 
hence  disowns  all  supernatural  interference  as  impertinent.  It 
is  preposterous  to  allege  that  my  consciousness  or  subjectivity 
involves  any  other  person  than  myself,  since  this  would  vitiate 
my  personal  identity,  and  hence  defeat  my  possible  spiritual  in- 
dividuality or  character.  If,  being  what  I  am  conscious  of  being, 
namely,  a  moral  or  personal  existence  invested  with  self-control 
or  the  rational  ownership  of  my  actions,  I  yet  am  not  so  natu- 
rally or  of  myself,  but  by  some  supernatural  or  foreign  interven- 
tion, then  obviously  I  am  simply  what  such  intervention  deter- 
mines me  to  be,  and  my  feeling  of  selfhood  or  freedom  is  grossly 
illusory.  Thus  morality,  which  is  the  assertion  of  a  selfhood  in 
man  commensurate  with  all  the  demands  of  nature  and  society 
upon  him,  turns  out,  if  too  rigidly  insisted  on  —  if  maintained 
as  a  divine  finality,  or  as  having  not  merely  a  constitutional,  but 
a  creative  truth,  not  merely  a  subjective  or  phenomenal,  but  also 


4  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

an  objective  or  real  validity  —  to  be  essentially  atheistic,  and 
drives  those  who  are  loyal  rather  to  the  inward  spirit  than  the 
outward  letter  of  revelation  to  repugn  the  old  maxims  of  a  su- 
pernatural creation  and  providence  as  furnishing  any  longer  a 
satisfactory  theorem  of  existence. 

Faith  must  reconcile  herself  to  this  perilous  alternative,  if  she 
obstinately  persist  in  making  our  natural  morality  supernatural 
by  allowing  it  a  truth  irrespective  of  consciousness,  or  assigning 
it  any  objectivity  beyond  the  evolution  of  human  society  or  fel- 
lowship. It  is  not  its  own  end,  but  a  strict  means  to  a  higher  or 
spiritual  evolution  of  life  in  our  nature;  and  they  accordingly 
who  persist  in  ignoring  this  truth  must  expect  to  fall  intellectual- 
ly behind  the  time  in  which  they  live.  Some  concession  here  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  save  the  religious  instinct.  For  men  feel 
a  growing  obligation  to  co-ordinate  the  demands  of  freedom  or 
personality  with  the  limitations  of  science  ;  and  since  Kant's  re- 
morseless criticism  stops  them  off —  under  penaltv  of  accepting 
his  impracticable  noumenal  world  —  from  postulating  any  longer 
an  objective  being  answering  to  their  subjective  seeming,  they 
must  needs  with  his  successors  give  the  whole  question  of  crea- 
tion the  go-by,  in  quietly  resolving  the  minor  element  of  the 
equation  into  the  major,  man  into  God,  or  making  the  finite  a 
mere  transient  experience  of  the  infinite,  by  means  of  which 
that  great  unconsciousness  attains  to  selfhood.  For  this  is  the 
sum  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic,  to  confound  existence  with  being, 
or  make  identity  no  longer  serve  individuality,  but  absorb  or 
swallow  it  up  :  so  bringing  back  creation  to  intellectual  chaos, 
which  is  naught. 

I  myself,  in  common  with  most  men  doubtless,  feel  an  in- 
stinctive repugnance  to  these  insane  logical  results  ;  but  instinct 
is  not  intelligence,  and  sophistry  can  be  combated  only  by  in- 
telligence. Now,  to  my  mind,  nothing  so  effectually  arms  the 
intellect  against  error,  whether  it  be  the  error  of  the  sceptic  or 
the  error  of  the  fanatic,  whether  it  reflect  our  prevalent  religious 
cant  or  our  almost  equally  prevalent  scientific  cant,  as  a  due  ac- 
quaintance and  familiarity  with  the  ontological  principles  of 
Swedenborg.  Emanuel  Swedenborg,  I  need  not  say,  is  by  no 
means  as  yet  "  a  name  to  conjure  with  "  in  polite  circles,  and, 
for  aught  I  opine,  may  never  become  one.  Nevertheless  nu- 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  O 

merous  independent  students  are  to  be  found,  who,  having  been 
long  hopeless  of  getting  to  the  bottom  of  our  endless  controver- 
sies, confess  that  their  intellectual  doubts  have  at  last  been  dis- 
persed by  the  sunshine  of  his  ontology.  It  would  be  small 
praise  of  Swedenborg  to  say  that  he  does  not,  like  Hegel,  be- 
numb our  spiritual  instincts,  or  drown  them  out  in  a  flood  of 
vainglorious  intoxication  brought  about  by  an  absurd  exaltation 
of  the  subjective  element  in  life  above  the  objective  one.  This 
praise  no  doubt  is  true,  but  much  more  is  true  ;  and  that  is,  that 
he  enlightens  the  religious  conscience,  and  so  gives  the  intellect 
a  repose  which  it  has  lacked  throughout  history  —  a  repose  as 
natural  and  therefore  as  sane  and  sweet  as  the  sleep  of  infancy. 
Admire  Hegel's  legerdemain  as  much  as  you  will,  his  ability  to 
make  light  darkness  and  darkness  light  in  all  the  field  of  man's 
relations  to  God ;  but  remember  also  that  it  is  characteristic  of 
the  highest  truth  to  be  accessible  to  common  minds,  and  inacces- 
sible only  to  ambitious  ones.  Tried  by  this  test,  the  difference 
between  the  two  writers  is  incomparably  in  favor  of  Sweden- 
borg. For  example  what  a  complete  darkening  of  our  intellect- 
ual optics  is  operated  by  Hegel's  fundamental  postulate  of  the 
identity  of  object  and  subject,  being  and  thought.  "  Thought 
and  being  are  identical."  Such  indeed  is  the  necessary  logic  of 
idealism.  Now  doubtless  our  faculty  of  abstract  thought  is  chief 
among  our  intellectual  faculties ;  but  when  it  is  seriously  pro- 
posed to  build  the  universe  of  existence  upon  a  logical  abstrac- 
tion, one  must  needs  draw  a  very  long  breath.  For  thought  by 
itself  affords  a  most  inadequate  basis  even  to  our  own  conscious 
activity  ;  and  when,  therefore,  our  unconscious  being  is  in  ques- 
tion, it  confesses  itself  a  simply  ludicrous  hypothesis. 

But  in  reality  Hegel,  in  spite  of  his  extreme  pretension  in 
that  line,  never  once  got  within  point-blank  range  of  the  true 
problem  of  ontology ;  and  this  because  he  habitually  confounded 
being  with  existence,  spirit  with  nature.  By  being  he  never 
meant  being,  but  always  existence,  the  existence  we  are  con- 
scious of;  so  that  when  he  would  grasp  the  infinite,  he  fancied 
he  had  only  to  resort  to  the  cheap  expedient  of  eliminating  the 
finite.  It  is  precisely  as  if  a  man  should  say :  "  All  I  need  in 
order  to  procure  myself  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  my  own 
visage,  is  not  to  look  at  its  reflection  in  the  looking-glass." 


6  THE   SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

Think  the  finite  away,  said  Hegel,  and  the  infinite  is  left  on 
your  hands.  Yes,  provided  the  infinite  is  never  a  positive 
quantity,  but  only  and  at  most  a  thought-negation  of  its  own 
previously  thought-negation.  But  really,  if  the  infinite  be  this 
mere  negation  of  its  own  negation,  that  is,  if  being  turns  out 
to  be  identical  with  nothing,  with  the  absence  of  mere  thing, 
then  I  must  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  I  do  not  see  why  any 
sane  person  should  covet  its  acquaintance.  Being  which  has 
been  so  utterly  compromised,  and  indeed  annihilated,  by  its  own 
phenomenal  forms,  as  to  be  able  to  reappear  only  by  their  dis- 
appearance, is  scarcely  the  being  which  unsophisticated  men 
will  ever  be  persuaded  to  deem  infinite  or  creative.  But  then 
I  must  also  say,  in  the  second  place,  let  it  be  true,  as  Hegel 
alleges,  that  being  is  identical  with  the  absence  of  thing,  that  is, 
with  nothing,  I  still  am  at  an  utter  loss  to  understand  how 
that  leaves  it  identical  with  pure  thought.  I  need  not  deny 
that  I  hold  thing  and  thought  to  be  by  any  means  identical ; 
but  I  am  free  to  maintain  nevertheless  that  if  you  actually  ab- 
stract things  from  thought,  you  simply  render  thought  itself 
exanimate.  For  thought  has  no  vehicle  or  body  but  language, 
and  language  owes  all  its  soul  or  inspiration  to  things.  Ab- 
stract things  then,  and  neither  thought  nor  language  actually 
survives.  You  might  as  well  expect  the  body  to  survive  its 
soul. 

But  in  truth  this  metaphysic  chatter  is  the  mere  wantonness 
of  sense.  The  infinite  is  so  far  from  being  negative  of  the  finite, 
that  it  is  essentially  creative  —  and  hence  exclusively  affirma- 
tive —  of  it.  The  finite  indeed  is  only  that  inevitable  diffraction 
of  itself  which  the  infinite  undergoes  in  the  medium  or  mirror 
of  our  sensuous  thought,  in  order  so  to  adapt  itself  to  our  dim 
intelligence.  It  is  accordingly  no  less  absurd  for  us  to  postulate 
a  disembodied  or  unrevealed  infinite  —  an  infinite  unrobed  or 
unrepresented  by  the  finite  —  than  it  would  be  to  demand  a 
father  unavouched  by  a  child.  The  infinite  is  the  sole  reality 
which  underlies  all  finite  appearance,  and  in  that  tender  unob- 
trusive way  makes  itself  conceivable  to  our  obtuse  thought. 
Should  we  get  any  nearer  this  reality  by  spurning  the  gracious 
investiture  through  which  alone  it  becomes  appreciable  to  us  ? 
Is  a  man's  intelligence  of  nature  improved,  on  the  whole,  by 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  7 

putting  out  his  eyes  ?  If,  then,  the  infinite  reveals  itself  to  our 
nascent  understanding  only  by  the  finite  —  i.  e.  by  what  we 
already  sensibly  know  —  how  much  nearer  should  we  come  to 
its  knowledge  by  rejecting  such  revelation  ?  We  who  are'  not 
infinite  cannot  know  it  absolutely  or  in  itself,  but  only  as  it  veils 
or  abates  its  splendor  to  the  capacity  of  our  tender  vision,  — 
only  as  it  reproduces  itself  within  our  finite  lineaments.  In  a 
word,  our  knowledge  of  it  is  no  way  intuitive,  but  exclusively 
empirical.  Would  our  chances  of  realizing  such  knowledge  be 
advanced,  then,  by  following  Hegel's  counsel,  and  disowning 
that  apparatus  of  finite  experience  by  which  alone  it  becomes 
mirrored  to  our  intelligence?  In  other  words,  suppose  a  man 
desirous  to  know  what  manner  of  man  he  is :  were  it  better  for 
him,  in  that  case,  to  proceed  by  incontinently  smashing  his  look- 
ing-glass, or  by  devoutly  pondering  its  revelations  ?  The  ques- 
tion answers  itself.  The  glass  may  be  by  no  means  achromatic ; 
it  may  return  indeed  a  most  refractory  reply  to  the  man's  inter- 
rogatory ;  but  nevertheless  it  is  his  only  method  of  actually 
compassing  the  information  he  covets,  and  in  the  estimation 
of  all  wise  men  he  will  stamp  himself  an  incorrigible  fool  if 
he  breaks  it. 

But  the  truth  is  too  plain  to  need  argument.  There  is  no 
antagonism  of  infinite  and  finite  except  to  our  foolish  regard. 
On  the  contrary,  there  is  the  exact  harmony  or  adjustment  be- 
tween them  that  there  is  between  substance  and  shadow :  the 
infinite  being  that  which  really  or  absolutely  is,  and  the  finite 
that  which  actually  or  contingently  appears.  The  infinite  is 
the  faultless  substance  which,  unseen  itself,  vivifies  all  finite 
existence;  the  finite  is  the  fallacious  shadow  which  neverthe- 
less attests  that  substance.  The  shadow  has  no  pretension 
absolutely  to  be,  but  only  to  exist  or  appear  as  a  necessary 
projection  or  image  of  the  substance  upon  our  intellectual 
retina ;  and  when  consequently  we  wink  the  shadow  out  of 
sight,  we  do  not  thereby  acuminate  our  vision,  we  simply 
obliterate  it.  That  is  to  say,  we  do  not  thereby  approximate 
our  silly  selves  to  the  infinite,  but  simply  degrade  them  out 
of  the  finite  into  the  void  inane  of  the  indefinite.  To  you' 
who  are  not  being,  being  can  become  known  only  as  finite  or 
phenomenal  existence.  If  then  you  abstract  the  finite,  the 


8  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

realm  of  the  phenomenal,  you  not  only  miss  the  infinite  sub- 
stance you  seek  to  know,  but  also  and  even  the  very  shadow 
itself  upon  which  your  faculty  of  knowledge  is  suspended. 
Such,  however,  was  the  abysmal  absurdity  locked  away  in 
Hegel's  dialectic,  which  remorselessly  confounds  infinite  form 
and  finite  substance,  real  or  objective  being  with  phenomenal 
or  subjective  seeming ;  which  in  fact  turns  creation  upside 
down,  by  converting  it  from  an  orderly  procedure  of  the  divine 
love  and  wisdom  into  a  tipsy  imbroglio,  where  what  is  lowest 
to  thought  is  made  to  mvolve  what  is  highest,  and  what  is 
highest  in  its  turn  to  evolve  what  is  lowest :  so  that  God  and 
man,  creator  and  creature,  in  place  of  being  eternally  indi- 
vidualized or  objectified  to  each  other's  regard,  become  mutu- 
ally undiscoverable,  being  hopelessly  swamped  to  sight  in  the 
ineffectual  mush  of  each  other's  subjective  identity.  But 
what  is  Hegel's  supreme  shame  in  the  eyes  of  philosophy, 
namely,  his  utter  unscrupulous  abandonment  of  himself  to  the 
inspiration  of  idealism,  will  constitute  his  true  distinction  to 
the  future  historiographer  of  philosophy.  For  idealism  has 
been  the  secret  blight  of  philosophy  ever  since  men  began  to 
speculate  ;  and  what  Hegel  has  done  for  philosophy  in  run- 
ning idealism  into  the  ground,  has  been  to  bring  this  secret 
blight  to  the  surface,  so  exposing  it  to  all  eyes,  and  making 
it  impossible  for  human  fatuity  ever  to  go  a  step  further,  in  that 
direction  at  all  events. 

The  correction  which  Swedenborg  brings  to  this  pernicious 
idealistic  bent  of  the  mind  consists  in  the  altogether  novel 
light  he  sheds  upon  the  constitution  of  consciousness,  and 
particularly  upon  the  fundamental  discrimination  which  that 
constitution  announces  between  the  phenomenal  identity  of 
things  and  their  real  individuality ;  between  the  subjective  or 
merely  quantifying  element  in  existence,  and  its  objective  or 
properly  qualifying  one.  The  old  philosophy  was  blind  to  this 
sharp  discrimination  in  the  constitution  of  existence.  It  re- 
garded existence,  not  as  a  composite,  but  as  a  simple  quantity, 
and  consequently  sank  the  spiritual  element  in  things  in  their 
natural  element — sank  what  gives  them  individuality,  life,  soul, 
in  what  gives  them  identity,  existence,  body ;  in  other  words 
sank  the  creative  element  in  existence  —  what  causes  it  absolutely 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  9 

or  objectively  to  be  —  in  its  constitutive  or  generative  element, 
in  what  causes  it  phenomenally  or  subjectively  to  appear.  For 
example,  what  was  its  conception  of  man  ?  It  regarded  him 
simply  on  his  moral  side,  which  presents  him  as  essentially 
selfish  or  inveterately  objective  to  himself,  and  left  his  spirit- 
ual possibilities,  which  present  him  as  essentially  social,  or 
spontaneously  subject  to  his  neighbor,  wholly  unrecognized.* 
In  short,  it  separated  him  from  the  face  of  deity  by  all  the 
breadth  of  nature  and  all  the  length  of  history ;  and  suspended 
his  return  upon  some  purely  arbitrary  interference  exerted  by 
deity  upon  the  course  of  nature  and  the  progress  of  history. 

Swedenborg's  analysis  of  consciousness  stamps  these  judg- 
ments as  sensuous  or  immature,  and  restores  man  to  the  inti- 
mate fellowship  of  God.  Consciousness  according  to  Sweden- 
borg  claims  two  most  disproportionate  generative  elements  ;  — 
one  universal,  subjective,  passive,  organic  ;  the  other,  particular, 
objective,  human,  active,  free.  The  former  element  gives  us 
fixity  or  limitation  ;  universalizes  or  identifies  us,  by  relating  us 
to  the  outward  and  finite,  i.  e.  to  nature.  The  latter  element 
gives  us  freedom,  which  is  ^-limitation  or  c?e-finition  ;  partic- 
ularizes or  individualizes  us,  by  relating  us  to  the  inward  and 
infinite,  i.  e.  to  God.  This  latter  element  is  absolute  and  cre- 
ative, for  it  gives  us  potential  being  before  we  actually  exist  or 
become  conscious.  The  other  element  is  merely  phenomenal 
and  constitutive,  making  us  exist  or  go  forth  to  our  own  con- 
sciousness in  due  cosmical  place  and  order. 

Now  the  immense  bearing  which  this  analysis  of  conscious- 
ness exerts  upon  cosmological  speculation,  or  the  question  of 
creation,  becomes  at  once  obvious  when  we  reflect  that  it  utterly 
inverts  the  long-established  supremacy  of  subject  to  object  in 
existence,  and  so  demolishes  at  a  blow  the  sole  philosophic  haunt 
of  idealism  or  scepticism.  The  great  scientific  value  of  the 
Critical  Philosophy  lay  in  Kant's  making  manifest  the  latent 
malady  of  the  old  philosophy  by  dogmatically  affiliating  object 
to  subject,  the  not-me  to  the  me.  His  followers  only  proved 

*  The  best  and  briefest  definition  of  moral  existence  is,  the  alliance  of  an  inward 
subject  and  an  outward  object ;  and  of  spiritual  existence,  the  alliance  of  an  outward 
subject  and  an  inward  object.  Thus  in  moral  existence  what  is  public  or  universal 
dominates  what  is  private  or  individual ;  whereas  in  spiritual  existence  the  case 
is  reversed,  and  the  outward  serves  the  inward. 
2 


10  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

themselves  to  be  his  too  apt  disciples,  in  endeavoring  to  paint 
and  adorn  this  ghastly  disease  with  the  ruddy  hues  of  health, 
by  running  philosophy  into  pure  or  objective  idealism.  For  if 
the  subjective  element  in  existence  alone  identifies  it  or  gives  it 
universality,  then  manifestly  we  cannot  allow  it  also  to  individu- 
alize it  or  give  it  unity,  without  making  the  being  of  things 
purely  subjective,  and  hence  denying  it  any  objective  reality. 
Kant  is  scrupulously  logical.  He  accepts  the  deliverance  of 
sense  as  final,  that  the  me  determines  the  not-me;  that  the  con- 
scious or  phenomenal  element  in  experience  controls  its  un- 
conscious or  real  one ;  and  hence  he  cannot  help  denying  any 
absolute  truth  to  creation.  He  cannot  help  maintaining  that 
however  much  the  creator  may  be,  he  will  at  any  rate  never  be 
able  to  appear ;  that  however  infinite  or  perfect  he  may  claim  to 
be  in  himself,  that  very  infinitude  must  always  prevent  him  in- 
carnating himself  in  the  finite,  and  consequently  forbid  any  true 
revelation  of  his  perfection  to  an  imperfect  intelligence.  And 
Mr.  Mansel,  who  is  Kant's  intellectual  grandson,  is  so  tickled 
with  this  sceptical  fatuity  on  the  part  of  his  sire,  as  to  find  in  it 
a  new  and  fascinating  base  for  our  religious  homage ;  and  he 
does  not  hesitate  accordingly  to  argue  that  the  only  stable  motive 
to  our  faith  in  God  is  supplied  by  ignorance,  not  by  knowledge.; 
or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  by  fear,  not  by  love. 

Swedenborg,  I  repeat,  effectually  silences  these  ravings  of 
philosophic  despair  by  simply  rectifying  the  basis  of  philosophy, 
or  affirming  an  absolute  as  well  as  an  empirical  element  in 
consciousness,  an  infinite  as  well  as  a  finite  element  in  knowl- 
edge. He  provides  a  real  or  objective,  no  less  than  a  phe- 
nomenal or  subjective,  element  in  existence  ;  an  element  of  un- 
conditional being  as  well  as  of  conditional  seeming ;  a  creative 
element,  in  short,  no  less  than  a  constitutive  one.  This  absolute 
or  infinite  element  in  existence  is  what  qualifies  the  existence,  is 
what  gives  it  distinctive  life  or  soul,  and  so  permits  it  to  be 
objectively  individualized  as  man,  horse,  tree,  stone;  while  its 
empirical  or  finite  element  merely  quantifies  it,  or  gives  it 
phenomenal  body,  and  so  permits  it  to  be  subjectively  identified 
as  English-ina.Ti,  French-man  ;  race-horse,  draught-horse  ;  fruit- 
tree,  forest-tree ;  sand-stone,  lime-stone.  Or  let  us  take  some 
artificial  existence,  say  a  statue.  Now  of  the  two  elements 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  11 

which  go  to  make  up  the  statue,  one  ideal,  the  other  material, 

—  one  objective  or  formal,  the  other  subjective  or  substantial, 

—  the  latter,  according  to  Swedenborg,  finites  the  statue,  fixes 
it,  incorporates  it,  gives  it  outward  body,  and  thus  universalizes 
or  identifies  it  with  other  existence ;  while  the  former  m-finites 
it,  frees  it  from  material  bondage,  vivifies  it,  gives  it  inward  soul, 
and  so  individualizes  it  from   all  other  existence.      Thus  the 
statue  as  an  ideal  form,  or  on  its  qualitative  side,  is  absolute  and 
infinite  with  all  its  maker's  absoluteness  and  infinitude ;  and  it  is 
only  as  a  material  substance,  or  on  its  quantitative  side,  that 
it  turns  out  contingent,  finite,  infirm. 

This  discrimination,  so  important  in  every  point  of  view  to 
the  intellect,  gives  us  the  key  to  Swedenborg's  ontology,  his 
doctrine  of  the  Lord  or  Maxirnus  Homo.  Swedenborg's  cos- 
mological  principles  make  the  natural  world  a  necessary  impli- 
cation of  the  spiritual,  and  consequently  make  the  spiritual 
world  the  only  safe  or  adequate  explication  of  the  natural.  In 
short,  his  theory  of  creation  assigns  a  rigidly  natural  genesis 
and  growth  to  the  spiritual  world ;  and  as  this  theory  is  sum- 
marily comprised  in  his  doctrine  of  the  God-Man  or  Divine 
Natural  Humanity,  I  shall  proceed  to  test  the  philosophic  worth 
of  this  doctrine,  by  applying  it  to  the  problem  of  our  human 
origin  and  destiny.  But  before  doing  this  it  may  be  expedient 
briefly  to  recall  who  and  what  Swedenborg  was,  in  order  to  as- 
certain whether  his  private  history  sheds  any  light  upon  his  dog- 
matic pretensions. 

I. 

It  is  known  to  all  the  world  that  Swedenborg,  for  many  years 
before  his  death,  assumed  to  be  an  authorized  herald  of  a  new 
and  spiritual  divine  advent  in  human  nature.  Similar  assump- 
tions are  not  infrequent  in  history,  and  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
our  proper  a  priori  attitude  toward  them  is  one  of  contempt 
and  aversion.  But  Swedenborg's  alleged  mission,  both  as  he 
himself  conceived  it  and  as  his  books  represent  it,  claimed  no 
personal  or  outward  sanction,  and  accepted  no  voucher  but  what 
it  found  in  every  man's  unforced  delight  in  the  truth  to  which 
it  ministered.  He  was  himself  remarkably  deficient  in  those 


12  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

commanding  personal  qualities  and  graces  of  intellect  which 
attract  popular  esteem ;  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  no  such  in- 
sanity ever  entered  his  own  guileless  heart  as  to  attribute  to 
himself  the  power  of  complicating  in  any  manner  the  existing 
relations  of  man  and  God. 

Swedenborg,  as  we  learn  from  his  latest  and  best  biographer, 
Mr.  White,* — whose  work  is  almost  a  model  in  its  kind,  and 
does  emphatic  credit  both  to  his  intellect  and  conscience,  —  was 
born  at  Stockholm  in  1688.  His  father,  who  was  a  Swedish 
bishop  distinguished  for  learning  and  piety,  christened  the  infant 
Emanuel,  "  in  order  that  his  name  might  continually  remind 
him  of  the  nearness  of  God,  and  of  that  interior,  holy,  and 
mysterious  union  in  which  we  stand  to  him."  The  youth  thus 
devoutly  consecrated  justified  all  his  father's  hopes,  for  his 
entire  life  was  devoted  to  science,  religion,  and  philosophy.  His 
history,  as  we  find  it  related  by  Mr.  White,  was  unmarked  by 
any  striking  external  vicissitudes ;  and  his  pursuits  were  at  all 
times  so  purely  intellectual  as  to  leave  personal  gossip  almost  no 
purchase  upon  his  modest  and  blameless  career.  He  held  the 
office  for  many  years  of  Government  Assessor  of  Mines,  and 
appears  to  have  enjoyed  friendly  and  even  intimate  personal 
relations  with  Charles  XII.,  to  whose  ability  as  a  mathematician 
his  diary  affords  some  interesting  testimonies.  While  he  was 
not  professionally  active,  his  days  were  devoted  to  study  and 
travel ;  and  by  the  time  he  had  reached  his  fiftieth  year,  his 
scholarly  and  scientific  repute  had  been  advanced  and  established 
by  several  publications  of  great  interest.  We  may  say  generally 
that  the  pursuits  of  science  claimed  all  his  attention  till  he  was 
upwards  of  fifty  years  old ;  that  his  life  and  manners  were  pure 
and  irreproachable,  and  his  intellectual  aspirations'"  singularly 
elevated.  To  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  the  soiil  by  the 
strictest  methods  of  science  had  always  been  his  hope  and 
endeavor.  He  conceived  that  the  body,  being  the  fellow  of  the 
soul,  was  in  some  sort  its  continuation ;  and  that  if  he  could 
only  penetrate  therefore  to  its  purest  forms  or  subtlest  essences, 
he  would  be  sure  of  touching  at  last  the  soul's  true  territory. 
Long  and  fruitless  toil  had  somewhat  disenchanted  him  of  this 

*  Emanuel  Swedenborg  :  his  Life  and  Writings.  By  William  White.  London, 
1867.  2  Vols.  8vo.  See  Appendix,  Note  A. 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  13 

illusion  previously ;    but  what   he   calls  "  the   opening   of  his 
spiritual  sight,"   which  event  means  his  becoming  acquainted 
with  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  scriptures,  or  the  truth  of  the 
DIVINE  NATURAL  HUMANITY,  effectually  put  an  end  to  it,  by 
convincing  him  that  the  tie  between  soul  and  body,  or  spirit  and 
letter,  is  not  by  any  means  one  of  sensible  continuity,  as  from 
finer  to  grosser,  but  one  exclusively  of  rational  correspondence, 
such  as  obtains  between  cause  and  effect.     From  this  moment, 
accordingly,  he   abandoned   his   scientific   studies,  and  applied 
himself  with  intense  zeal  to  the  unfolding  of  the  spiritual  sense 
of  the  scriptures  "  from  things  seen  and  heard  in  the  spiritual 
world."     This  internal   sense  of  the  scriptures  is  very  unat- 
tractive reading  to  those  who  care  more  for  entertainment  than 
instruction,  and  I  cannot  counsel  any  one  of  a  merely  literary 
turn  to  undertake  it.      But  it  is  full  of  marrow  and  fatness  to  a 
philosophic  curiosity,  from  the  flood  of  novel  light  it  lets  in  upon 
history ;    its  substantial  import  being,  that  the   history  of  the 
church  on  earth,  which  is  the  history  of  human  development  up 
to  a  comparatively  recent  period,  has  been  only  a  stupendous 
symbol,  or  cover,  under  which  secrets  of  the  widest  creative 
scope  and  efficacy,  issues  of  the  profoundest  humanitary  signifi- 
cance, were  all  the  while  assiduously  transacting.      It  is  fair  to 
suppose,  therefore,  that  our  sense  of  the  worth  of  Swedenborg's 
spiritual  pretensions  will  be   somewhat  biassed  by  the  estimate 
we  habitually  put  upon  the  church  as  an  instrument  of  human 
progress.     If  we  suppose  church  and  state  to  have  been  purely 
accidental  determinations  of  man's  history,  owning  no  obligation 
to  his  selfish  beginnings  on  the   one   hand,  nor  to  his  social 
destiny  on  the  other,  we  shall  not  probably  lend  much  attention 
to  the  information  proffered  by  Swedenborg.     But  if  we  believe 
with  him  that  the  realm  of  "  accident,"  however  vast  to  sense, 
has   absolutely  no   existence  to  the  reason   emancipated  from 
sense,  we  shall  probably  regard  the  church,  and  its  derivative 
the  state,  as  claiming  a  true  divine  appointment ;  and  we  may 
find  consequently  in  his  ideas  of  its  meaning  and  history  an  ap- 
proximate justification  of  his  claim  to  spiritual  insight.     At  all 
events   no   lower  justification   of   his   claim   is  for  a  moment 
admissible  to  a  rational  regard.     As  I  have  already  said,  his 
books  are  singularly  void  of  literary  fascination.     I  know  of  no 


14  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

writer  with  anything  like  his  intellectual  force  who  is  so  per- 
sistently feeble  in  point  of  argumentative  or  persuasive  skill. 
His  books  teem  with  the  grandest,  the  most  humane  and  gen- 
erous truth ;  but  his  reverence  for  it  is  so  austere  and  vital, 
that,  like  the  lover  who  willingly  makes  himself  of  no  account 
beside  his  mistress,  he  seems  always  intent  upon  effacing  himself 
from  sight  before  its  matchless  lustre.  Certainly  the  highest 
truth  never  encountered  a  more  lowly  intellectual  homage  than 
it  gets  in  these  artless  books ;  never  found  itself  so  unosten- 
tatiously heralded,  so  little  patronized  in  a  word,  or  left  so  com- 
pletely for  its  success  to  its  own  sheer  unadorned  majesty. 

It  must  be  admitted  also  that  the  books,  upon  a  superficial 
survey,  repel  philosophic  as  much  as  literary  curiosity,  by  sug- 
gesting the  notion  of  an  irreconcilable  conflict  between  our 
conscious  or  phenomenal  freedom  and  our  unconscious  or  real 
dependence.  To  a  cursory  glance  they  appear  to  assert  an 
endless  warfare  between  the  interests  of  our  natural  morality 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  our  spiritual  destiny  on  the  other.  It 
seems,  for  example,  to  be  taught  by  Swedenborg,  that  humar: 
morality  serves  such  important  theoretic  ends  in"  the  economy 
of  creation,  that  it  may  even  be  allowed  to  render  the  creature 
utterly  hostile  to  the  creator,  or  endow  him  with  a  faculty  of 
spiritual  suicide,  and  yet  itself  incur  no  reproach.  In  other 
words,  our  moral  freedom  is  apparently  made  to  claim  such  ex- 
treme consideration  at  the  divine  hands,  in  consequence  of  its 
eminent  uses  to  the  spiritual  life,  as  justifies  it  in  absolutely 
deflecting  us,  if  need  be,  from  the  paths  of  peace,  and  landing 
us  ultimately  in  chronic  spiritual  disaffection  to  our  maker. 
Such  no  doubt  is  the  surface  aspect  of  these  remarkable  books  — 
the  aspect  they  wear  to  a  hasty  and  prejudiced  observation  ; 
and  if  the  reality  of  the  case  were  at  all  conformable  to  the 
appearance,  nothing  favorable  of  course  would  remain  to  be 
said,  since  no  sharper  affront  could  well  be  offered  to  the  crea- 
tive perfection,  than  to  suppose  it  baffled  by  the  inveterate  im- 
becility of  its  own  helpless  creature. 

But  the  reality  of  the  case  is  by  no  means  answerable  to  this 
surface  seeming ;  and  it  is  only  from  gross  inattention  to  what 
we  may  call  the  author's  commanding  intellectual  doctrine  — 
his  doctrine  of  the  Lord  or  Maximus  Homo  —  that  a  contrary 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOKG.  15 

impression  prevails  to  the  prejudice  of  his  philosophic  repute. 
This  doctrine  claims,  in  the  estimation  of  those  who  discern  its 
profound  intellectual  significance,  to  be  the  veritable  apothe- 
osis of  philosophy.  What  then  does  the  doctrine  practically 
amount  to  ?  It  amounts,  briefly  stated,  to  this :  that  what  we 
call  nature,  meaning  by  that  term  the  universe  of  existence, 
mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  which  seems  to  us  infinite  in 
point  of  space  and  eternal  in  point  of  time,  is  yet  in  itself,  or 
absolutely,  void  both  of  infinity  and  eternity ;  the  former  ap- 
pearance being  only  a  sensible  product  and  correspondence  of 
a  relation  which  the  universal  heart  of  man  is  under  to  the 
divine  love,  and  the  latter,  a  product  and  correspondence  of 
the  relation  which  the  universe  of  the  human  mind  is  under 
to  the  divine  wisdom.  Thus  nature  is  not  in  the  least  what  it 
sensibly  purports  to  be,  namely,  absolute  and  independent ; 
but,  on  the  contrary,  is  at  every  moment,  both  in  whole  and 
in  part,  a  pure  phenomenon  or  effect  of  spiritual  causes  as 
deep,  as  contrasted,  and  yet  as  united,  as  God's  infinite  love 
and  man's  unfathomable  want.  In  short,  Swedenborg  describes 
nature  as  a  perpetual  outcome  or  product  in  the  sphere  of 
sense  of  an  inward  supersensuous  marriage  which  is  forever 
growing  and  forever  adjusting  itself  between  creator  and  crea- 
ture, between  God's  infinite  and  essential  bounty  and  our  in- 
finite and  essential  necessity.  But  these  statements  are  too 
brief  not  to  require  elucidation. 

II. 

Let  it  be  understood,  then,  first  of  all,  that  creation,  in  Swe- 
denborg's  view,  is  of  necessity  a  composite,  not  a  simple, 
movement,  inasmuch  as  it  is  bound  to  provide  for  the  creature's 
subjective  existence,  no  less  than  his  objective  being.  The 
creature,  in  order  to  be  created,  in  order  truly  to  be,  must 
exist  or  go  forth  from  the  creator  ;  and  he  can  thus  exist  or 
go  forth  only  in  his  own  form,  of  course.  Thus  creation,  or  the 
giving  absolute  being  to  things,  logically  involves  a  subordinate 
process  of  making,  which  is  the  giving  them  phenomenal  or 
conscious  form.  In  fact,  upon  this  strictly  incidental  process 
of  formation,  the  entire  truth  of  creation  philosophically  pivots ; 


16  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

for  unless  the  creator  be  able  to  give  his  creature  subjective 
identity  (which  is  natural  alienation  from,  or  otherness  than, 
himself),  he  will  never  succeed  in  giving  him  objective  individ- 
uality, which  is  spiritual  oneness  with  himself.  In  other  words, 
the  creature  can  enjoy  no  real  or  objective  conjunction  with  the 
creator,  save  in  so  far  as  he  shall  previously  have  undergone 
phenomenal  or  conscious  disjunction  with  him.  His  spiritual 
or  specific  fellowship  with  the  creator  presupposes  his  natural 
or  generic  inequality  with  him.  In  short,  the  interests  of 
the  creature's  natural  identity  dominate  those  of  his  spirit- 
ual individuality  to  such  an  extent  that  he  remains  absolutely 
void  of  being,  save  in  so  far  as  he  exists  or  goes  forth  in  his 
own  proper  lineaments.  If  creation  were  by  possibility  the 
direct  act  of  divine  omnipotence,  which  men  superstitiously 
deem  it  to  be  —  in  other  words,  if  God  could  create  man  magi- 
cally, i.  e/  without  any  necessary  implication  of  man  himself, 
without  any  implication  of  his  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal 
nature  —  then  of  course  creator  and  creature  would  be  undis- 
tinguishable,  and  creation  fail  to  avouch  itself.  Thus  the  total 
truth  of  creation  spiritually  regarded  hinges  upon  its  being  a 
reflex  not  a  direct,  a  composite  not  a  simple,  a  rational  not  an 
arbitrary  exertion  of  divine  power  —  hinges,  in  short,  upon 
its  supplying  a  subjective  and  phenomenal  development  to  the 
creature  every  way  commensurate  with,  or  adequate  to,  the  ob- 
jective and  absolute  being  he  has  in  the  creator. 

We  may  clearly  maintain,  then,  that  the  truth  of  creation  is 
wholly  contingent  upon  the  truth  of  the  creature's  identity.  If 
the  creator  is  able  to  afford  the  creature  valid  selfhood  or 
identity,  then  creation  is  philosophically  conceivable,  otherwise 
not.  All  that  philosophy  needs,  in  permanent  illustration  of 
the  creative  name,  is  to  rescue  the  creature  subjectively  re- 
garded from  the  creator,  or  put  his  identity  upon  an  inexpug- 
nable basis.  To  create  or  give  being  to  things  is  no  doubt  an 
inscrutable  function  of  the  divine  omnipotence,  to  which  our 
intelligence  is  incapable  of  assigning  any  a  priori  law  or  limit. 
But  we  are  clearly  competent  to  say  a  posteriori  of  the  things 
thus  created,  that  they  are  only  in  so  far  as  they  exist  or  go 
forth  in  their  own  form.  That  is  to  say,  they  must,  in  order 
to  their  being  true  creatures  of  God,  not  only  possess  spirit- 


THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  17 

ual  form  or  objectivity  in  him,  as  the  statue  has  ideal  form  or 
objectivity  in  the  genius  of  the  sculptor,  or  the  child  moral 
form  or  objectivity  in  the  loins  of  his  father,  but  they  must 
actually  go  forth  from  him,  or  exist  in  their  own  proper  sub- 
stance, in  their  own  constitutional  identity,  just  as  the  statue 
exists  in  the  appropriate  constitutional  substance  which  the 
marble  gives  it,  or  the  child  in  the  proper  constitutional  linea- 
ments with  which  the  mother  invests  it.  The  legal  maxim  is, 
de  non  apparentibus  et  non  existentibus  eadem  est  ratio.  The 
philosophic  demand  is  broader.  It  says,  no  esse  without  exis- 
tere ;  no  reality  without  corresponding  actuality ;  no  soul  with- 
out body  ;  no  form  without  substance  ;  no  being  without  mani- 
festation ;  in  short,  no  creation  on  God's  part  save  in  so  far  as 
there  is  a  rigidly  constitutional  response  and  reaction  on  ours. 
The  creative  perfection  is  wholly  active  ;  that  is  to  say,  God 
is  true  creator  only  to  the  extent  that  we  in  our  measure  are 
true  creatures.  Thus,  before  creation  can  be  worthy  of  its  name, 
worthy  either  of  God  to  claim  it  or  of  us  to  acknowledge  it  save 
in  a  lifeless,  traditional  way,  it  implies  a  subjective  experience 
on  our  part,  an  historic  evolution  or  process  of  formation,  by 
which  we  become  eternally  projected  from  God,  or  endowed 
with  inalienable  self-consciousness,  and  so  qualified  for  his  sub- 
sequent spiritual  fellowship  and  converse.  In  other  words,  crea- 
tion is  practically  and  of  necessity  to  our  experience  a  formative 
or  historic  process,  exhibiting  a  descent  of  the  divine  nature  ex- 
actly proportionate  to  the  elevation  of  the  human,  and  so  pre- 
senting creator  and  creature  in  indissoluble  union.  This  is  the 
inexorable  postulate  of  creation,  that  the  creature  be  himself — 
have  selfhood  or  subjective  life  —  a  life  as  distinctively  his  own 
as  God's  life  is  distinctively  his  own.  Not  only  must  the  crea- 
ture aspire,  instinctively  and  innocently  aspire,  "  to  be  like  God, 
knowing  good  and  evil,"  i.  e.  to  be  sufficient  unto  himself,  but  the 
creative  perfection  is  bound  to  ratify  that  aspiration,  and  endow  its 
creature  with  all  its  own  wealth  of  goodness  and  wisdom.  The 
aspiration  itself  is  the  deepest  motion  of  the  divine  spirit  within 
us.  It  is  impossible  to  be  spiritually  begotten  of  God  without 
desiring  to  be  like  him  ;  that  is,  to  be  wise  and  good  even  as 
he  is,  not  from  constraint  or  the  prompting  of  expediency,  but 
spontaneously,  or  from  a  serene  inward  delight  in  goodness  and 
2 


18  THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

wisdom.  Evidently  no  fellowship  between  God  and  our  own 
souls  is  possible  until  this  instinct  be  appeased ;  for  up  to  that 
event  all  our  life  will  have  been  only  the  concealed  motion  of 
his  spirit  in  our  nature.  He  alone  will  have  been  really  living 
in  us,  while  we  ourselves  will  have  only  seemed  to  live  —  will 
have  been,  in  fact,  mere  unconscious  masks  of  his  life. 

Now  how  shall  creation  ever  be  seen  to  bear  this  surprising 
fruit  ?  From  the  nature  of  the  case,  creation  must  be  a  purely 
spiritual  operation  on  God's  part,  since  he  alone  is,  and  there  is 
nothing  outside  of  him  whence  the  creature  may  be  summoned. 
By  the  hypothesis  of  creation,  God  alone  is,  and  the  creature 
exclusively  by  him.  How  is  it  conceivable,  therefore,  to  our 
intelligence,  that  the  creature  should  possess  selfhood  or  subjec- 
tive identity,  without  a  compromise  to  that  extent  of  the  divine 
unity  ?  How  is  it  conceivable  that  God,  the  sole  being,  should 
himself  create  or  give  being  to  other  existence  without  impair- 
ing to  that  extent  his  own  infinitude  ?  The  creature  has  no 
being  which  he  does  not  derive  from  the  creator  ;  this  is  obvious. 
And  yet  the  hypothesis  of  creation  binds  us  to  regard  the  creator 
as  communicating  his  own  being  to  another,  without  any  limita- 
tion of  its  fulness.  The  demand  of  our  intelligence  is  insatia- 
ble, therefore,  until  it  ascertain  how  these  things  can  be  —  until 
it  perceive  how  it  is  that  the  creator  is  able  to  impart  selfhood 
or  moral  power  to  the  absolutely  dependent  offspring  of  his  own 
hands,  the  abjectly  helpless  offspring  of  his  own  perfection.  By 
an  indomitable  instinct  the  mind  claims  to  know,  and  will  never 
rest  accordingly  until  it  discover,  what  it  is  which  validly  sepa- 
rates creature  from  creator,  and  so  permits  their  subsequent  union, 
not  only  without  violence  to  either  interest,  but  with  consum- 
mate reciprocal  advantage  and  beatitude  to  both  interests. 

It  is  exactly  here  —  in  giving  us  light  upon  this  most  momen- 
tous and  most  mysterious  inquiry  —  that  what  Swedenborg  calls 
"  the  opening  of  his  spiritual  sight,"  or  his  discovery  of  "  the 
spiritual  sense  of  the  scriptures,"  professes  to  make  itself  of  end- 
less avail.  What  the  literal  sense  of  revelation  is,  we  all  know 
familiarly.  We  have  been  too  familiar  with  it,  in  fact,  not  to 
have  had  our  spiritual  perceptions  somewhat  overlaid  by  it.  It 
represents  creation  as  a  work  of  God  conceived  and  accomplished 
in  space  and  time,  and  consequently  makes  the  relation  of 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  19 

creator  and  creature  essentially  outward  and  personal.  Now 
"  the  spiritual  sense  "  of  scripture  as  reported  by  Swedenborg 
is  not  a  new  or  different  literal  sense.  It  is  not  the  least  literal, 
inasmuch  as  it  utterly  disowns  the  obligations  of  space  and 
time,  and  claims  the  exclusive  authentication  of  an  infinite  love 
and  wisdom.  In  short,  by  the  spiritual  or  living  sense  of 
revelation,  Swedenborg  means  the  truth  of  God's  NATURAL 
humanity ;  so  that  all  our  natural  prepossessions  in  regard  to 
space  and  time  and  person  confess  themselves  purely  rudimental 
and  educative,  the  moment  we  come  to  acknowledge  in  nature 
and  man  an  infinite  divine  substance.  It  is  true,  no  doubt, 
that  Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  creation  falls,  without  constraint, 
into  the  literal  terms  of  the  orthodox  dogma  of  the  incarnation. 
But  then  the  letter  of  revelation  bears,  as  he  demonstrates,  so 
inverse  a  relation  to  its  living  spirit,  that  we  can  get  no  help  but 
only  hindrance,  from  any  attempt  to  interpret  his  statements  by 
the  light  of  dogmatic  theology.  Dogmatic  theology  is  bound' 
hand  and  foot  by  the  letter  of  revelation  ;  and  the  letter  of 
revelation  "  is  adapted,"  says  Swedenborg,  "  only  to  the  appre- 
hension of  simple  or  unenlightened  men,  in  order  that  they 
may  thus  be  introduced  to  the  acquaintance  of  interior  and 
higher  verities."  Again  he  says,  "  Three  things  of  the  lit- , 
eral  sense  perish,  when  the  spiritual  sense  of  the  word  is 
evolving,  namely,  whatsoever  belongs  to  space,  to  time,  or  to 
person"  ;  and  still  again,  "In  heaven  no  attention  is  paid  to 
person,  nor  the  things  of  person,  but  to  things  abstracted  from 
person  ;  thus  angels  have  no  perception  of  any  person  whose 
name  is  mentioned  in  the  word,  but  only  of  his  human  quality 
or  faculty."  Hence  he  describes  those  who  are  in  spiritual  ideas 
as  never  thinking  of  the  lord  from  person,  "  because  thought 
determined  to  person  limits  and  degrades  the  truth,  while 
thought  undetermined  to  person  gives  it  infinitude  "  ;  and  he 
adds,  that  the  angels  are  amazed  at  the  stupidity  of  church 
people,  "  in  not  suffering  themselves  to  be  elevated  out  of  the 
letter  of  revelation,  and  persisting  to  think  carnally,  and  not 
spiritually  of  the  lord,  —  as  of  his  flesh  and  blood,  and  not , 
of  his  infinite  goodness  and  truth."  * 

*  Arcana  Celcstia,  8705,  5253,  9007  ;  and  Apocalypse  Explained,  30. 


20  THE   SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 


III. 

It  is  manifestly  idle,  then,  to  attempt  coercing  the  large 
philosophic  scope  of  Swedenborg's  doctrine  within  the  dimen- 
sions of  our  narrow  ecclesiastical  dogma.  There  is  as  real  a 
contrast  and  oppugnancy  between  the  two  to  the  intellect,  as 
there  is  to  the  stomach  between  a  loaf  of  bread  and  a  paving- 
stone.  For  example,  it  is  vital  to  the  dogmatic  view  of  the 
incarnation  to  regard  it  as  an  event  completely  included  in 
space  and  time,  and  yet  brought  about  by  supernatural  power, 
acting  in  direct  contravention  of  the  course  of  nature.  A  dog- 
ma of  this  stolid  countenance  bluffs  the  intellect  off  from  its 
wonted  activity  no  less  effectually,  of  course,  than  a  stone  taken 
into  the  stomach  arrests  the  digestive  circulation.  With  Swe 
denborg,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Christian  facts  utterly  refute 
this  supernatural  conception  of  the  divine  existence  and  opera- 
tion, or  reduce  it  to  a  superstition,  by  proving  nature  herself, 
in  the  very  crisis  of  her  outward  disorder,  to  have  been  in- 
wardly alive  with  all  divine  order,  peace,  and  power.  Accord- 
ing to  Swedenborg,  the  birth,  the  life,  the  death,  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ  were  so  remote  from  supernatural  contingencies 
as  to  confess  themselves  the  consummate  flowering  of  the  cre- 
ative energy  in  universal  nature,  i.  e.  the  universe  of  the  human 
mind,  embracing  heaven  and  hell  quite  equally.  No  doubt  the 
flower  is  a  very  marked  phenomenon  to  the  senses,  filling  the 
atmosphere  with  its  glory  and  fragrance.  But  its  total  interest 
to  the  rational  mind  turns  upon  those  hidden  affinities  which,  by 
means  of  its  aspiring  stem  and  its  grovelling  roots,  connect  it  at 
once  with  all  that  is  loftiest  and  all  that  is  lowliest  in  universal 
nature,  and  so  turn  the  flower  itself  into  a  sensuous  sign  merely 
or  modest  emblem  of  a  secret  most  holy  marriage,  which  is  for- 
ever transacting  in  unseen  depths  of  being,  between  the  generic, 
universal,  or  merely  animate  substances  of  the  mind,  and  its 
specific,  unitary,  or  human  form.  So  with  the  incarnation. 
The  literal  facts  have  no  significance  to  the  spiritual  under- 
standing, save  as  a  natural  ultimate  and  revelation  of  the  true 
principles  of  creative  order,  the  order  that  binds  the  universe 
of  existence  to  its  source. 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  21 

What  are  these  principles  ?  They  are  all  summed  up  in  the 
truth  of  the  essential  divine  humanity.  According  to  Sweden- 
borg,  God  is  essential  Man  ;  so  that  creation,  instead  of  being 
primarily  a  sensible  product  of  divine  power,  or  a  work  ac- 
complished in  space  and  time,  turns  out  first  of  all  a  spiritual 
achievement  of  the  divine  love  and  wisdom  in  all  the  forms 
of  human  nature,  and  only  subordinately  to  that  a  thing  of 
physical  dimensions.  Swedenborg  enforces  this  truth  very 
copiously  in  the  way  of  illustration,  but  never  in  that  of  ratio- 
cination. His  reason  for  this  abstention  is  very  instructive. 
Swedenborg  distinguishes  as  no  person  has  ever  done  between 
two  orders  of  truth  —  truth  of  being,  ontological  truth,  truths 
of  conscience  in  short ;  and  truth  of  seeming,  phenomenal 
truth,  truths  of  science  in  short.  The  distinction  between 
these  two  orders  of  truth  is,  that  the  former  is  not  probable, 
that  is  to  say,  admits  of  no  sensuous  proof ;  while  the  latter  is 
essentially  probable,  i.  e.  capable  of  being  proved  by  sensuous 
reasoning.  The  French  proverb  says,  the  true  is  not  always 
the  probable.  Now  with  Swedenborg,  the  true  —  the  supremely 
true — is  never  the  probable,  that  is,  finds  no  countenance  in 
outward  likelihood,  but  derives  all  its  support  from  the  inward 
sanction  of  the  heart.  Facts  —  which  are  matter  of  outward 
observation  or  science  —  may  be  reasoned  about  to  any  extent, 
and  legitimately  established  by  reasoning.  But  truth  —  which 
is  matter  of  inward  experience  or  conscience  —  owns  no  such 
dependence,  and  invites  no  homage  but  that  of  a  modest,  un- 
ostentatious Yea,  yea!  Nay,  nay!  The  philosophic  ground'' 
of  this  state  of  things  is  obvious.  For  if  the  case  were  other-  1 
wise,  if  truth,  truths  of  life,  could  be  reasoned  into  us,  or  be 
made  ours  by  force  of  persuasion,  then  belief  would  no  longer 
be  free  ;  that  is  to  say,  it  would  no  longer  reflect  the  love  of  i 
the  heart,  but  control  or  coerce  it.  In  other  words,  the  truth  / 
believed  would  no  longer  be  the  truth  we  inwardly  love  and 
crave,  but  only  that  which  has  most  outward  prestige  or 
authority  to  back  it.  In  that  event,  of  course,  our  affections,  j 
which  ally  us  with  infinitude  or  God,  would  be  at  the  mer-  j 
cy  of  our  intelligence,  which  allies  us  with  nature  or  the 
finite.  And  life  consequently,  instead  of  being  the  sponta- 
neous indissoluble  marriage  of  heart  and  head  which  it  really 


22  THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

is,  would  confess  itself  at  most  their  voluntary  or  chance  con- 
cubinage. 

I  have  no  pretension,  of  course,  to  decide  dogmatically  for 
the  reader  whether  what  Swedenborg  calls  the  Divine  Natural 
Humanity  be  the  commanding  truth  he  supposes  it  to  be,  or 
whether  it  be  a  mere  otiose  hypothesis.  But  I  am  bound 
to  assist  him,  so  far  as  I  am  able,  to  decide  these  questions 
for  himself;  and  I  cannot  do  this  more  effectually  than  by 
fixing  his  attention  for  a  while  upon  what  is  involved  in  the 
middle  term  of  Swedenborg's  proposition,  since  we  are  apt  to 
cherish  very  faulty  conceptions  of  what  nature  logically  com- 
prises. Swedenborg's  doctrine  summarily  stated  is,  that  what 
we  call  nature,  and  suppose  to  be  exactly  what  it  seems,  is  in 
truth  a  thing  of  strictly  human  and  strictly  divine  dimensions 
both  as  being  at  one  and  the  same  moment  a  just  exponent  of 
the  creature's  essential  want  or  finiteness,  and  of  the  creator's 
essential  fulness  or  infinitude.  In  other  words,  where  people 
whose  understanding  is  still  controlled  by  sense,  see  nature 
absolute  or  unqualified  by  spirit,  Swedenborg,  professing  to 
be  spiritually  enlightened,  does  not  see  nature  at  all,  but  only 
the  lord,  or  God-Man,  carnally  hidden  indeed,  degraded,  hu- 
miliated, crucified  under  all  manner  of  devout  pride  and  self- 
seeking,  but  at  the  same  time  spiritually  exalted  or  glorified  by 
a  love  untainted  with  selfishness,  and  a  wisdom  undimmed  by 
prudence.  Manifestly  then,  in  order  to  do  justice  to  Sweden- 
borg's doctrine,  we  must  rid  ourselves  first  of  all  of  certain 
sensuous  prejudices  we  cherish  in  regard  to  nature  ;  and  to 
this  aim  we  shall  now  for  a  moment  address  ourselves. 

Nature  is  all  that  our  senses  embrace  ;  thus  it  is  whatsoever 
appears  to  be.  Now  the  two  universals  of  this  phenomenal  or 
apparitional  world  are  space  and  time ;  for  whatsoever  sensibly 
exists,  exists  in  space  and  time,  or  implies  extension  and  dura- 
tion. Space  and  time  have  thus  a  fixed  or  absolute  status  to 
our  senses,  so  furnishing  our  spiritual  understanding  with  that 
firm  though  dusty  earth  of  fact  or  knowledge,  upon  which  it 
may  forever  ascend  into  the  serene  expansive  heaven  of  truth 
or  belief.  But  now  observe  ;  just  because  space  and  time, 
which  make  up  our  notion  of  nature,  are  thus  absolute  to  our 
senses,  we  are  led  in  the  infancy  of  science,  or  while  the  senses 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  23 

still  dominate  the  intellect,  to  confer  upon  nature  a  logical 
absoluteness  or  reality  which  in  truth  is  wholly  fallacious.  We 
habitually  ascribe  a  rational  or  supersensuous  reality  to  her,  as 
well  as  a  sensible  ;  or  regard  the  universe  of  space  and  time, 
not  only  as  the  needful  implication  of  our  subjective  or  con- 
scious existence,  but  as  an  ample  explication  also  of  our 
objective  or  unconscious  being.  And  every  such  conception  of 
the  part  nature  plays  in  creation  is  puerile,  and  therefore  mis- 
leading or  fatal  to  a  spiritual  apprehension  of  truth. 

This  may  be  seen  at  a  glance.  For  if  you  consent  to  make 
nature  absolute  as  well  as  contingent  —  that  is,  if  you  make 
it  be  irrespectively  of  our  intelligence,  which  you  do  whenever 
you  reflectively  exalt  space  and  time  from  sensible  into  rational 
quantities  —  then,  of  course,  you  disjoin  infinite  and  finite,  God 
and  man,  creator  and  creature,  not  only  phenomenally  but 
really  ;  not  only  ab  intra  or  in  se,  but  also  and  much  more  ab 
extra,  or  by  all  the  literal  breadth  of  nature's  extension,  and 
all  the  literal  length  of  her  duration :  so  swamping  spiritual 
thought  in  the  bottomless  mire  of  materialism.  For  obviously 
if  you  thus  operate  a  real  or  spiritual  disjunction  between  God 
and  man,  you  can  never  hope  to  bring  about  that  actual  or 
literal  conjunction  between  them  which  Swedenborg  affirms  in 
his  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Natural  Humanity,  save  by  hyposta- 
tizing  some  preposterous  mediator  as  big  as  the  universe  and  as 
ancient  as  the  world.  In  short,  you  will  be  driven  in  this  state 
of  things  spiritually  to  reconcile  God  and  man,  or  put  them 
at-one,  only  by  inventing  a  style  of  personality  so  egregiously 
finite  or  material  as  literally  to  embody  in  itself  all  nature's 
indefinite  spaces,  and  all  her  indeterminate  times. 

Thus,  according  to  Swedenborg,  sensuous  conceptions  of 
truth  —  the  habit  we  have  of  estimating  appearances  as  reali- 
ties —  are  the  grand  intellectual  hindrance  we  experience  to 
the  acknowledgment  of  a  creation  in  which  creator  and  creature 
are  spiritually  united.  Evidently,  then,  our  only  mode  of  exit 
from  the  embarrassments  which  sense  entails  upon  the  intellect, 
is  to  spurn  her  authority  and  renounce  her  guidance.  Now  the 
lustiest  affirmation  sense  makes  is  to  the  unconditional  validity 
of  space  and  time,  or  their  existence  in  se;  and  this  means  in- 
ferentiallv  the  integrity  of  nature,  or  the  dogma  of  a  physical 


24  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

creation.  The  great  service,  accordingly,  which  Swedenborg 
does  the  intellect  is,  that  he  refutes  this  sensuous  dogmatizing 
by  establishing  the  pure  relativity  of  space  and  time  ;  so  vindi- 
cating the  exclusive  truth  of  the  spiritual  creation.  I  defy 
any  fair-minded  person  to  read  Swedenborg,  and  still  preserve 
a  shred  of  respect  for  the  dogma  of  a  physical  creation.  He 
utterly  explodes  the  assumed  basis  of  the  dogma,  by  demonstrat- 
ing that  space  and  time  are  contingencies  of  a  finite  or  sensibly 
organized  intelligence ;  hence  that  nature,  being  all  made  up  of 
space  and  time,  has  no  rational,  but  only  a  sensible  objectivity. 
He  demonstrates,  in  fact,  and  on  the  contrary,  that  nature 
rationally  regarded  is  the  realm  of  pure  subjectivity,  having  no 
other  pertinency  to  the  spiritual  or  objective  world  than  the 
bodily  viscera  have  to  the  body,  than  the  shadow  has  to  the 
substance  which  projects  it,  than  darkness  has  to  light,  or  death 
to  life  —  that  is,  a  strictly  reflective  pertinency.  The  true 
sphere  of  creation  being  thus  spiritual  or  inward,  it  follows, 
according  to  Swedenborg,  that  any  doctrine  of  nature  which 
proceeds  upon  the  assumption  of  her  finality,  or  does  not  con- 
strue her  as  a  mere  constitutional  means  to  a  superior  creative 
end  —  as  a  mere  outward  echo  or  reverberation  of  the  true 
creative  activity  in  inward  realms  of  being  —  is  simply  de- 
lirious. 

Swedenborg's  doctrine  then  of  the  Divine  Natural  Humanity 
becomes  readily  intelligible,  if,  disowning  the  empire  of  sense, 
we  consent  to  conceive  of  nature  after  a  spiritual  manner,  that 
is,  by  reducing  her  from  a  principal  to  a  purely  accessory  part 
in  creation,  from  a  magisterial  to  a  strictly  ministerial  func- 
tion. There  is  not  the  least  reason  why  I  individually  should 
be  out  of  harmony  with  infinite  goodness  and  truth,  except  the 
limitation  imposed  upon  me  by  nature,  in  identifying  me  with 
my  bodily  organization,  and  so  individualizing  or  differencing 
me  from  my  kind.  Make  this  limitation  then  the  purely  sub- 
jective appearance  which  it  truly  is,  in  place  of  the  objective 
reality  which  it  truly  is  not,  —  make  it  a  fact  of  my  natural 
constitution,  and  not  of  my  spiritual  creation,  a  fact  of  my 
phenomenal  consciousness  merely,  and  not  of  the  absolute 
and  infinite  being  I  have  in  God,  —  and  you  at  once  bring 
!  me  individually  into  harmony  with  God's  perfection.  Our 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBOKG.  25 

discordance  was  never  internal  or  spiritual,  was  never  at  best 
anything  but  phenomenal,  outward,  moral,  owing  to  my  igno- 
rance of  the  laws  of  creation,  or  my  sensible  inexperience  of 
the  spiritual  world,  of  which  nevertheless  I  am  all  the  while  a 
virtual  denizen.  Take  away  then  this  fallacious  semblance  of 
the  truth  operated  by  sense,  and  we  relieve  ourselves  of  the 
sole  impediment  which  exists  to  the  intellectual  approximation 
and  equalization  of  creator  and  creature,  of  infinite  and  finite, 
and  so  are  prepared  to  discern  their  essential  and  inviolable 
unity. 

Thus  the  supreme  obligation  we  owe  to  Philosophy  is  to  drop 
nature  out  of  sight  as  a  real  or  rational  quantity  intervening 
between  creator  and  creature,  and  hiding  them  from  each  other's 
regard,  and  to  conceive  of  her  only  as  an  actuality  to  sense, 
operating  a  quasi  separation  between  them,  with  a  view  exclu- 
sively to  propitiate  and  emphasize  their  real  unity.  In  a  word, 
we  are  bound  no  longer  to  conceive  of  nature  as  she  appears 
to  sense,  i.  e.  as  utterly  independent  or  unqualified  by  subjec- 
tion to  man  ;  but  only  as  she  discloses  herself  to  the  reason, 
that  is,  as  rigidly  relative  to  the  human  soul,  and  altogether 
qualified  or  characterized  by  the  uses  she  promotes  to  our  spirit- 
ual evolution. 

IV. 

Certainly  we  have  no   right   after  this  to  attribute  to  Swe- 
denborg  an  obscure  or  mystical  conception  of  nature.     Nature 
bears  the  same  servile  relation  to  the  spiritual  creation  that  a 
man's  body  bears  to  his  soul,  that  the  material  of  a  house  bears 
to  the  house  itself,  or  that  the  substance  of  a  statue  bears  to  its 
form,  namely,  a  merely  quantifying,  by  no  means  a  qualifying, 
relation.      It  fills   out  the   spiritual    creation,    substantiates   it, 
gives  it  subjective  anchorage,  fixity,  or  identification,  incorpo- 
rates it,  in  a  word,  just  as  the  marble  incorporates  the  statue. 
For  the  statue  is  primarily  an  ideal  form,  affiliating  itself  to 
the  artist's  genius  exclusively,  and  is  only  derivatively  thence^ 
a  material  existence.     So  I  primarily  am  a  spiritual  form,  thatj 
is  to  say,  a  form  of  affection  and  thought,  directly  affiliated  to ; 
the   creative  love   and  wisdom ;    and  what  my  body  does  is  \ 


26  THE   SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

merely  to  fill  out  this  form,  substantiate  it,  define  it  to  itself, 
give  it  consciousness,  allow  it  to  say  me,  mine,  thee,  thine. 
What  my  body  then  does  for  my  spirit  specifically,  nature  does 
for  the  universe  of  the  human  mind,  or  the  entire  spiritual 
world;  namely,  it  incorporates  it,  defines  it  to  itself,  gives  it 
phenomenal  projection  from  the  creator,  and  so  qualifies  it  to 
appreciate  and  cultivate  an  absolute  conjunction  with  him. 
My  body  reveals  my  soul  —  i.  e.  reveals  the  spiritual  being  I 
have  in  God  —  to  my  own  rude  and  blunt  intelligence ;  and 
the  marble  of  the  statue  is  an  outward  revelation  of  the  beauty 
which  exists  ideally  to  the  artist's  brain.  So  nature  reveals  the 
spiritual  universe  to  itself,  mirrors  it  to  its  own  feeble  and  strug- 
gling intelligence,  invests  it  with  outward  or  sensible  lineaments, 
and,  by  thus  finiting  or  imprisoning  it  within  the  bounds  of 
space  and  time,  stimulates  it  to  react  towards  its  proper  free- 
dom or  its  essential  infinitude  in  God. 

I  cannot  too  urgently  point  the  reader's  attention  to  this 
masterly  vindication  of  nature,  and  the  part  it  plays  in  creation. 
Creation,  as  Swedenborg  conceives  it,  is  the  marriage  in  unitary 
form  of  creator  and  creature.  For  the  divine  love  and  wisdom, 
as  he  reports,  "  CANNOT  BUT  BE  AND  EXIST  in  other  beings  or 
existences  created  from  itself"  ;  and  nature  is  the  necessary 
ground  of  such  existences,  as  furnishing  them  conscious  projec- 
tion from  the  infinite.  But  let  me  throw  together  a  few  pas- 
sages illustrative  of  his  general  scheme  of  thought. 

"  It  is  essential  to  love  not  to  love  itself,  but  others,  and  to 
be  lovingly  united  with  them  ;  it  is  also  essential  to  it  to  be 
beloved  by  others,  since  union  is  thus  effected.  The  essence  of 
all  love  consists  in  union  ;  yea,  the  life  of  it,  or  all  that  it  con- 
tains of  enjoyment,  pleasantness,  delight,  sweetness,  beatitude, 
happiness,  felicity.  Love  consists  in  my  willing  what  is  my 
own  to  be  another's,  and  feeling  his  delight  as  my  own ;  this  it 
is  to  love.  But  for  a  man  to  enjoy  his  own  delight  in  another, 
in  place  of  the  other's  delight  in  him,  this  is  not  to  love ;  for 
in  this  case  he  loves  himself,  while  in  the  other  he  loves  his 
neighbor.  These  two  loves  are  diametrically  opposed  ;  they  both 
indeed  are  capable  of  producing  union,  though  the  union  which 
self-love  produces  is  only  an  apparent  or  outward  union,  while 
really  or  inwardly  it  is  disunion.  For  in  proportion  as  any 


THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  27 

one  loves  another  for  selfish  ends,  he  afterwards  comes  to  hate 
him.  How-  can  any  man  of  understanding  help  perceiving 
this  ?  What  sort  of  love  is  it  for  a  man  to  love  himself  only, 
and  not  another  than  himself,  by  whom  he  is  beloved  again  ? 
Clearly  no  union,  but  only  disunion,  results  from  such  love  ;  for 
union  in  love  supposes  reciprocation,  and  reciprocation  does 
not  exist  in  self  alone.  Now  when  this  is  true  of  all  love,  it 
cannot  but  be  infinitely  true  of  the  creative  love  ;  so  that  we 
may  conclude  that  the  divine  love  cannot  help  being  and  existing 
in  others  whom  it  loves  and  by  whom  it  is  beloved.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible, of  course,  that  God  can  love  and  be  beloved  by  others 
who  are  themselves  infinite  or  divine  ;  because  then  he  would 
love  himself,  for  the  infinite  or  divine  is  one.  If  this  infinitude 
or  divinity  adhered  in  others,  it  would  be  itself,  and  God  would 
consequently  be  self-love,  whereof  not  the  least  is  practicable 
to  him,  because  it  is  totally  contrary  to  his  essence"*  "  In  the 
created  universe  nothing  lives  but  God- Man  alone,  or  the  lord ; 
and  nothing  moves  but  by  life  from  him  ;  and  nothing  exists 
but  by  the  sun  from  him :  thus  it  is  a  truth  that  in  God  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being."  f  "  Creation  means,  what  is 
divine  from  inmost  to  outmost,  or  from  beginning  to  end.  For 
everything  which  is  from  the  divine  begins  from  himself,  and 
proceeds  in  an  orderly  manner  even  to  the  ultimate  end,  thus 
through  the  heavens  into  the  world,  and  there  rests  as  in  its  ulti- 
mate, for  the  ultimate  of  divine  order  is  cosmical  nature."  :f 

Thus  in  all  true  creation  the  creator  is  bound,  by  the  fact  of 
his  giving  absolute  being  to  the  creature,  to  communicate  him- 
self—  make  himself  over  —  without  stint  to  the  creature;  and 
the  creature,  in  his  turn,  because  he  gives  phenomenal  form  or 
manifestation  to  the  creative  power,  is  bound  to  absorb  the 
creator  in  himself,  to  appropriate  him  as  it  were  to  himself,  to 
reproduce  his  infinite  or  stainless  love  in  all  manner  of  finite 
egotistic  form ;  so  that  the  more  truly  the  creator  alone  is,  the 
more  truly  the  creature  alone  appears.  Now  in  this  inevitable 
immersion  which  creation  implies  of  creative  being  in  created 
form,  we  have,  according  to  Swedenborg,  the  origin  of  nature. 
It  grows  necessarily  out  of  the  obligation  the  creature  is  under 

*  Divine  Love  and  Wisdom,  47  -49.  t  Ibid.,  301. 

J  Arcana  Celestia,  10,  634. 


28  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

by  creation  to  appropriate  the  creator,  or  reproduce  him  in  his 
own  finite  lineaments.  It  overtly  consecrates  the  covert  mar- 
riage of  infinite  and  finite,  creator  and  creature.  By  the  hy- 
pothesis of  creation  the  creator  gives  sole  and  absolute  being  to 
the  creature ;  and  unless  therefore  the  creature  reverberate  the 
communication,  or  react  towards  the  creator,  the  latter  will  inev- 
itably swallow  him  up,  or  extinguish  the  faintest  possibility  of 
self-consciousness  in  him.  And  the  only  logical  reverberation  of 
being  is  form  or  appearance.  Being  is  extensive  ;  form  is  inten- 
sive. Being  expropriates  itself  to  whatsoever  is  not  itself;  form 
impropriates  whatsoever  is  not  itself  to  itself.  Thus  in  the  hi- 
erarchical marriage  of  creator  and  creature  which  we  call  creation, 
the  creator  yields  the  creature  the  primary  place  by  spontane- 
ously assuming  himself  a  secondary  or  servile  one  ;  gives  him 
absolute  or  objective  being,  in  fact,  only  by  stooping  himself  to 
the  limitations  of  the  created  form.  Reciprocity  is  the  very 
essence  of  marriage.  Action  and  reaction  must  be  equal  between 
the  factors,  or  the  marriage  unity  is  of  its  own  nature  void. 
If,  accordingly,  the  creator  contribute  the  element  of  pure  being 
—  the  absolute  or  objective  element  —  to  creation,  the  creature 
must  needs  contribute  the  element  of  pure  form  or  appearance, 
its  phenomenal  or  subjective  element ;  for  being  and  form  are 
indissolubly  one. 

It  is  a  necessary  implication,  then,  of  the  truth  of  the  Divine 
Natural  Humanity,  that  while  the  creator  gives  invisible 
spiritual  being  to  the  creature,  the  creature  in  his  turn  gives 
natural  form  —  gives  visible  existence  —  to  the  creator  ;  or, 
more  briefly,  while  the  creator  gives  reality  to  the  creature,  the 
creature  gives  phenomenality  to  the  creator.  In  other  words 
still,  we  may  say,  that  while  the  creator  supplies  the  essential 
or  properly  creative  element  in  creation,  the  creature  supplies 
its  existential  or  properly  constitutive  element  —  that  element 
of  hold-back  or  resistance  without  which  it  could  never  put 
on  manifestation.  Nature  is  the  attestation  of  this  ceaseless 
give-and-take  between  creator  and  creature ;  the  nuptial  ring 
that  confirms  and  consecrates  the  deathless  espousals  of  infinite 
and  finite.  In  spite,  therefore,  of  its  fertile  and  domineering 
actuality  to  sense,  it  is  as  void  of  all  reality  to  reason  as  the 
shadow  of  one's  person  in  a  glass.  It  is,  in  fact,  only  the  out- 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG.  29 

ward  image  or  shadow  of  itself  which  is  cast  by  the  inward  or 
spiritual  world  upon  the  mirror  of  our  rudimentary  intelligence. 
And  inasmuch  as  the  shadow  or  subjective  image  of  itself 
which  any  object  projects  of  necessity  reproduces  the  object  in 
inverse  form,  so  nature,  being  the  subjective  image  or  shadow 
of  God's  objective  and  spiritual  creation,  turns  out  a  sheer  in- 
version of  spiritual  order  ;  exhibits  the  creator's  fulness  veiled 
by  the  creature's  want,  the  creator's  perfection  obscured,  or 
negatively  revealed,  by  the  creature's  imperfection.  Spiritual 
or  creative  order  affirms  the  essential  unity  of  every  creature 
with  every  other,  and  of  all  with  the  creator.  Natural  or 
created  order  must  consequently  exhibit  the  contingent  or  phe- 
nomenal oppugnancy  of  every  creature  with  every  other,  and 
of  all  with  the  creator ;  or  else  furnish  no  adequate  foothold  or 
flooring  to  the  spiritual  world. 

Nature  is  thus,  according  to  Swedenborg,  an  inevitable  impli- 
cation of  the  spiritual  world,  just  as  substance  is  inevitably 
implied  in  form,  i.  e.  as  serving  to  give  it  selfhood  or  identity. 
This  is  her  sole  function,  to  confer  consciousness  upon  exist- 
ence, or  give  it  fixity,  by  denying  it  individuality  or  affirming 
its  community  with  all  other  existence.  Nature  identifies  ex- 
istence or  gives  it  finiteness,  while  spirit  alone  individualizes  it 
or  gives  it  infinitude.  In  truth,  nature  is  a  pure  spiritual  ap- 
parition, having  no  reality  to  the  soul,  but  only  to  the  senses. 
It  exists  only  to  a  sensibly  organized  and  therefore  limited 
intelligence ;  and  hence,  however  absolute  it  appears,  it  is  really 
all  the  while  nothing  whatever  but  a  ratio  or  mean  between  a 
finite  and  an  infinite  mind.  We  as  creatures,  that  is,  as  finite 
by  constitution,  can  have,  of  course,  no  intuitive,  but  only  a 
rational  discernment  of  infinite  or  uncreated  things.  We 
cannot  know  divine  goodness  and  truth  in  a  direct  or  pre- 
sentative  way,  but  only  in  an  indirect  or  representative  one, 
that  is,  only  in  so  far  as  they  abase  themselves  to  our  natural 
level,  or  accommodate  themselves  to  our  nascent  sensuous 
understanding.  And  nature  is  the  proper  theatre  of  this  stu- 
pendous divine  abasement  and  accommodation  —  of  this  need- 
ful obscuration,  or  veiling-over,  of  the  divine  splendor,  in  order 
to  adapt  it  to  our  gross  carnal  vision.  Throughout  her  total 
length  and  breadth,  accordingly,  she  is  a  mere  correspondence 


30  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

or  imagery  of  what  is  going  on  in  living  or  spiritual  realms ; 
but  a  correspondence  or  imagery  which  is  vital  nevertheless  to 
our  apprehension  of  creative  order.  For  the  very  fact  of  our 
creatureship  insures  that  we  should  have  remained  forever  in- 
cognizant of  the  creator,  and  antipathetic  to  his  perfection, 
unless  he,  by  condescending  to  our  limitations,  or  reproducing 
himself  within  the  intelligible  compass  of  our  own  nature  and 
history,  had  gradually  emancipated  our  intelligence,  and  edu- 
cated us  into  living  sympathy  with  his  name. 

Such,  concisely  stated,  are  the  leading  axioms  of  Sweden- 
borg's  ontology.  Creation,  spiritually  regarded,  is  the  living 
equation  of  creator  and  creature.  But  in  order  to  the  latter's 
attaining  to  the  vital  fellowship  of  the  former,  he  must  put 
on  conscious  or  phenomenal  form,  must  become  clearly  self- 
pronounced,  that  so  being  made  aware,  on  the  one  hand,  of  his 
own  essential  and  inveterate  limitations,  he  may  become  quali- 
fied, on  the  other,  to  react  spiritually  towards  the  creator's 
infinitude.  In  other  words,  creation  implies  a  strictly  subordi- 
nate or  incidental  realm,  a  realm  of  preliminary  formation,  as 
we  may  say,  in  which  the  creature  comes  to  self-consciousness, 
or  the  conception  of  himself  as  a  being  essentially  distinct  from, 
and  antagonistic  to,  his  creator.  The  logic  of  the  case  is  in- 
exorable. If  creation  at  its  culmination  be  an  exact  practical 
equation  of  creator  and  creature,  the  minus  of  the  latter  being 
rigidly  equivalent  to  the  plus  of  the  former,  then  it  incorporates 
as  its  needful  basis  a  sphere  of  experience  on  the  creature's 
part,  in  which  he  may  feel  himself  utterly  remote  from  the 
creator,  and  abandoned  to  his  own  resources ;  an  empirical 
sphere  of  existence,  in  fine,  which  may  unmistakably  identify 
him  with  all  lower  things,  and  so  alienate  him  from  (i.  e.  make 
him  consciously  another  than)  his  creator.  Thus  creation  with 
Swedenborg,  being  at  its  apogee  a  rigid  equation  of  the  crea- 
tor's perfection  and  the  creature's  imperfection,  necessitates  a 
natural  history,  or  provisional  plane  of  projection  upon  which 
the  equation  may  be  wrought  out  to  its  most  definite  issues. 
Creator  and  creature  are  terms  of  an  inseparable  correlation, 
so  that  we  can  no  more  imagine  a  creation  to  which  the  one 
does  not  furnish  its  causative  element,  the  other  its  constitutive 
element,  than  we  can  imagine  a  child  in  which  father  and 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  31 

mother  are  not  coequal  factors,  the  one  conferring  life  or  soul, 
the  other  existence  or  body.  No  doubt  their  relation  is  a 
strictly  conjugal  one,  proceeding  upon  a  hierarchical  distribu- 
tion of  the  factors  ;  one  being  head,  the  other  hand  ;  one  being 
object,  the  other  subject ;  one  ruling,  the  other  obeying.  But 
their  unity  is  all  the  more  and  none  the  less  assured  on  this 
account ;  for  notoriously  the  truest  objective  harmony  is  that 
which  reconciles  the  intensest  subjective  diversity. 

To  sum  up  all  that  has  been  said,  creation,  with  Swedenborg, 
challenges  a  subject  earth,  no  less  than  an  all-encompassing 
heaven  ;  a  natural  constitution  or  body,  no  less  than  a  spiritual 
cause  or  soul ;  an  experimental  or  educative  sphere  for  the 
creature,  no  less  than  an  absolute  one  for  the  creator ;  a  realm 
of  phenomenal  freedom  or  finite  reaction  on  the  part  of  the 
former,  no  less  than  one  of  real  force  or  infinite  action  on  the 
part  of  the  latter.  In  a  word,  creation  means,  to  Swedenborg, 
the  creature's  spiritual  evolution  in  complete  harmony  with  his 
creator's  perfection ;  but  if  this  be  true,  and  certainly  philos- 
ophy tolerates  no  lower  conception,  then  obviously  creation 
demands  for  its  own  actuality  the  natural  involution  of  the 
creator,  or  his  complete  unresisting  immersion  in  finite  con- 
ditions. Which  is  only  saying  in  other  words,  that  creation 
—  being  a  spiritual  achievement  of  creative  power  within  the 
limits  of  the  created  consciousness  —  involves  to  the  creature's 
experience  a  rigidly  natural  generation  and  growth,  with  root 
and  stem  and  flower  all  complete. 


Y. 

"We  have  now  elucidated  the  logical  grounds  of  the  law  by 
which  alone,  according  to  Swedenborg,  creation  becomes  possible 
or  conceivable, —  the  law  of  the  creature's  finite  constitution,  as  it 
may  be  called,  or  of  his  apparent  life  in  himself,  in  order  to  his 
finding  real  life  in  God,  that  is  to  say,  the  law  of  his  phenome- 
nal or  subjective  disjunction  with  the  creator  in  the  interest  of 
their  real  and  objective  conjunction.  The  creator,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  bound,  in  the  interest  of  the  creature's  immortal  spiritual 
being,  to  endow  him  with  natural  or  subjective  seeming,  since 
otherwise  he  would  remain  destitute  of  selfhood  or  identity.  Such 


32  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

is  the  creative  law.  The  creature  must  at  least  seem  to  live  of 
himself —  must  at  least  feel  himself  to  be  absolute  or  uncondi- 
tioned in  all  the  range  of  his  natural  appetites  and  passions,  in  all 
the  breadth  of  his  constitutional  affections  and  thoughts  —  or 
else  remain  utterly  void  of  that  natural  imagery  of  God,  upon 
which  all  the  possibilities  of  their  subsequent  spiritual  sympathy 
and  communion  are  contingent.  It  is  clear  that  I  must  exist  to 
my  own  consciousness,  before  I  can  act  or  function  even  ani- 
mally ;  a  fortiori,  therefore,  before  I  can  function  morally  or  as 
a  man,  i.  e.  before  I  can  make  that  appropriation  to  myself  of 
good  and  evil,  upon  which  my  conscience  towards  God,  and  all 
the  results  of  such  conscience  to  my  spiritual  individuality  or 
character,  are  suspended.  And  what  is  a  necessity  for  one 
man  is  a  necessity  for  all. 

But  now  let  us  prepare  to  scrutinize  the  exact  method  of 
this  grand  creative  operation  as  reflected  in  the  facts  of  conscious- 
ness, in  order  that  we  may  cease  to  think  of  creation  as  a  volun- 
tary or  capricious  exertion  of  irresponsible  power,  and  learn  to 
conceive  of  it  only  as  an  orderly  going  forth  of  infinite  love  and 
wisdom  in  all  the  forms  of  human  nature.  For  this  and  nothing 
less  than  this  it  is.  Creation,  by  Swedenborg's  showing,  is  not 
that  frivolous,  irrational  event  in  space  and  time  which  men  have 
hitherto  deemed  it ;  is  not  that  mere  arbitrary  and  ostentatious 
parade  of  the  divine  power  which  superstition  delights  in  making 
it  appear.  It  is,  on  the  contrary,  in  its  largest  sense,  a  sincere 
and  stupendous  work  of  redemption  wrought  by  God  within  the 
limits  of  human  nature,  by  which  it  becomes  gradually  freed  from 
its  inherent  corruption  and  death,  and  progressively  invested 
with  God's  own  infinity  and  eternity.  Thus  low  or  material  con- 
ceptions of  creation  in  the  abstract  will  be  fatal  to  our  understand- 
ing of  Swedenborg's  cosmologic  doctrine,  and  the  reader  will  bear 
with  me  if  I  attempt  to  mark  out  the  true  boundaries  of  thought 
in  this  direction,  or  put  him  on  his  guard  against  permitting  his 
imagination  to  run  away  with  his  reason  in  estimating  the  creative 
method  —  the  method  in  which  the  creator  utterly  abases 
himself  to  the  lowest  level  of  the  creature's  egotism  and  cupidity, 
in  order  that  he  may  gradually  lift  the  latter  to  the  otherwise 
impracticable  heights  of  his  own  perfection. 

There  could  be  no  difficulty  in  rightly  estimating  the  prob- 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  33 

lem  of  creation  —  it  would  be  perfectly  easy,  in  other  words,  to 
regard  it  as  a  strictly  rational  or  orderly  achievement  of  di- 
vine power  —  if  it  were  not  for  the  grossly  material  aspect 
which  it  is  the  habit  of  the  sensuous  imagination  to  impose  upon 
the  relation  of  creator  and  creature.  Imagination,  enlightened 
only  by  sense,  reports  an  insuperable  distance  or  disagreement 
between  infinite  and  finite,  perfect  and  imperfect,  between  that 
which  essentially  is  and  that  which  essentially  is  not.  "  How 
shall  that,"  we  incessantly  demand  of  our  owlish  wisdom, 
"  how  shall  that  which  alone  really  is  make  that  which  really  is 
not  actually  to  be  ?  "  It  has  been  the  standing  puzzle  of  phi- 
losophy, since  the  world  began,  to  ascertain  how  creation  becomes 
possible  or  even  conceivable  on  the  hypothesis  of  the  creator 
remaining  always  infinite,  the  creature  always  finite.  And 
the  puzzle  was  a  reasonably  honest  one,  so  long  as  science  was 
incompetent  to  disclose  the  true  and  altogether  ministerial  or 
subordinate  part  that  nature  plays  in  the  drama  of  creation  —  the 
part  of  a  handmaid,  not  of  a  heroine.  But  it  is  no  longer  hon- 
est on  the  part  of  our  philosophic  guides  to  keep  up  this  mysti- 
fication, and  palm  off  their  own  wilful  imbecility  upon  the 
simple  as  a  necessity  of  the  intellect  itself,  when  we  have  in 
Swedenborg's  doctrine  of  God's  NATURAL  HUMANITY  a  sufficing 
solution  of  this  grand  philosophic  mystery,  a  perfect  key  to  the 
riddle  of  creation.  The  honest  desideratum  of  philosophy  — 
although  philosophy  has  not  always  been  intelligently  conscious 
of  her  desideria  —  was  to  discover  some  point  of  contact  between 
infinite  and  finite,  some  middle  or  undefined  territory  which 
should  effectively  neutralize  their  envenomed  hostility,  by 
blending  what  really  is  and  what  really  is  not  in  the  bosom  of 
its  own  actual  unity.  And  Swedenborg,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
fully  supplied  this  desideratum  to  philosophy,  in  his  doctrine 
of  the  God-Man,  or  Divine  Natural  Humanity  —  a  doctrine 
which  for  the  first  time  sheds  upon  nature  the  light  of  a  higher 
day,  and  lifts  it  out  of  the  vulgar  bone  of  contention  it  has 
hitherto  been  to  the  fanatic  on  one  hand  and  the  sceptic  on 
the  other,  into  a  superb  majestic  hieroglyph  of  the  spiritual 
creation,  into  a  frank  and  luminous  mirror  of  the  spotless 
ineffable  marriage  which  in  invisible  depths  of  being  forever 
unites  the  divine  and  human  natures. 

3 


34  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

Nature,  according  to  Swedenborg,  is  all  that  exists,  or  appears 
to  be.  Its  very  being  is  form  or  appearance  ;  its  total  esse  is 
existere ;  that  is  to  say,  nature  is  what  neither  really  is  nor 
really  is  not,  being  in  truth  an  actual  marriage  of  the  two 
which  makes  what  really  is  appear  as  if  it  were  not,  and  what 
really  is  not  appear  as  if  it  were.*  We  may  say,  then,  that 
nature  is  the  realm  neither  of  being  (i.  e.  love)  nor  of  not 
being  (i.  e.  self),  but  all  simply  of  existence  (i.  e.  self-love), 
which  blends  these  two  factors  in  the  unity  of  a  conscious  sub- 
ject. For  love  (being)  is  of  its  own  nature  infinitely  objective  ; 
that  is  to  say,  it  tends  to  exist  or  go  forth  from  itself  to  whatso- 
ever is  not  itself,  to  whatsoever  indeed  is  most  opposed  to 
itself;  and  it  can  only  so  exist  or  go  forth  of  course  in  subjective 
or  created  form,  in  which  it  may  dwell  as  in  itself  and  com- 
municate its  infinite  blessedness.  And  self  (not-being)  is  of  its 
own  nature  infinitely  subjective,  that  is,  tends  to  be,  tends  to 
stav  within  itself,  and  subjugate  to  itself  whatsoever  is  not  itself, 
—  whatsoever  is  in  the  least  degree  opposed  to  itself;  and  it 
can  only  thus  be  of  course,  by  appropriating  objective  or  creative 
substance  which  freely  lends  itself  to  its  embraces,  and  ministers 
unreservedly  to  its  lusts.  There  is  no  rational  escape,  as  it 
appears  to  me,  from  Swedenborg's  disclosures  on  this  subject. 
Love  of  its  own  nature,  of  its  own  fulness  or  perfection,  tends 
to  create,  i.  e.  tends  not  to  be  in  itself,  but  only  in  forms  cre- 
ated from  itself  to  which  it  may  thus  communicate  its  own  eter- 
nal felicities.  It  tends  to  forget  itself,  to  abandon  itself,  to 
lose  or  merge  itself  in  whatsoever  is  not  love,  but  self;  just 
as  self,  in  its  turn,  becoming  thus  incited  or  vivified,  tends  of 
its  proper  nature,  of  its  proper  want  or  imperfection,  to  be  loved 
infinitely,  i.  e.  tends  to  seek  itself  and  find  itself  in  whatsoever 
is  not  itself,  namely,  infinite  love.  And  this  reciprocal  tendency 
of  love  to  be  finited  by  not-love  or  self,  and  of  self  to  be  infinited 
by  not-self  or  love,  results  logically  in  the  universe  of  creation 
which  we  call  nature. 

*  If  indeed  "  to  exist  "  or  "  appear  to  be  "  were  equivalent  to  really  "  being," 
we  might  call  nature,  not  so  much  a  marriage  of  what  really  is  to  what  really  is 
not,  as  a  compromise  of  the  former  in  the  latter's  behalf,  whereby  the  one  abdicates 
being  to  the  same  extent  as  the  other  claims  it.  But  this  is  absurd,  for  to  exist  or 
to  appear  to  be  is  not  really  or  absolutely  to  be,  but  only  to  be  relatively  to  some- 
thing else  ;  and  the  creator  can  endow  the  creature  with  any  latitude  and  longitude 
of  being  in  this  sense,  without  the  slightest  compromise  of  his  infinity. 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  35 

Nature  accordingly  proclaims  itself  beyond  all  question  that 
indispensable  tertium  quid  of  which,  whether  consciously  or 
not  the  philosopher  has  always  been  in  search :  that  needful 
middle-term  or  neutral  ground  between  being  and  not-being, 
wherein  what  really  is  is  seen  giving  subjective  being  to  what 
is  not ;  and  what  really  is  not  is  seen  in  its  turn  giving  objective 
existence  to  what  is. 

Nature  is  thus  a  purely  subjective  work  of  God,  an  actual 
going  forth  of  creative  love  by  every  method  of  formative  wis- 
dom into  every  variety  of  creaturely  manifestation  or  conscious- 
ness. It  is  not  the  objective  or  spiritual  creation,  but  only  the 
shadow  of  itself  which  that  creation  necessarily  projects  upon  a 
carnal  or  sensibly  organized  intelligence  ;  and  it  is  a  sheer  in- 
tellectual insanity  to  regard  it  in  any  higher  light.  The  lion 
and  the  lamb,  for  example,  both  exist  in  nature,  but  has  either 
lion  or  lamb  the  least  title  to  be  esteemed  the  objective  or  spir- 
itual creature  of  God  ?  What  nonsense  to  think  of  such  a 
thing!  If  then  the  lion  and  the  lamb,  the  serpent  and  the 
dove,  the  leopard  and  the  kid,  the  bear  and  the  calf,  naturally 
exist  or  appear  to  be  to  my  intelligence,  what  is  the  inference  ? 
Not  that  such  things  spiritually  exist  or  have  absolute  being  in 
God,  but  that  they  pertain  exclusively  to  the  created  conscious- 
ness, having  no  other  function  than  outwardly  to  image  or  rep- 
resent the  things  of  human  affection  and  thought,  which  alone 
make  up  the  spiritual  creation,  or  are  alone  objective  to  the  di- 
vine mind.  Our  true  or  spiritual  and  objective  consciousness  is 
conditioned  upon  our  phenomenal  or  bodily  and  subjective  exist- 
ence, so  that  we  are  incapable  of  apprehending  interior  and  spir- 
itual verities  save  as  they  image  themselves  to  us  in  sensible 
forms.  None  of  these  sensible  things  really  or  spiritually  are 
and  exist ;  for  really  or  spiritually  God  alone  is,  and  man  alone 
really  or  spiritually  exists  from  him.  But  they  necessarily  exist  or 
appear  to  our  finite  consciousness,  to  our  sensuous  intelligence. 
Why  necessarily  ?  Because  otherwise  that  intelligence  or  con- 
sciousness would  be  without  form  and  void  of  substance.  My 
sensibility  and  intelligence,  my  feeling  and  knowledge,  are  by 
no  means  absolute  possessions  of  mine ;  they  do  not  belong  to 
me  as  personally  dissociated  with  nature,  and  independent  of  her 
resources,  but  only  as  I  am  intimately  one  with  her,  only  as  I 


36  THE   SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

partake  her  life,  or  am  in  organized  contact  with  external  things. 
They  are  not  faculties  which  inhere  in  me  objectively  regarded, 
or  as  unconditioned  upon  nature,  but  only  as  subjectively  regarded, 
that  is,  as  rigidly  conditioned  upon  mineral,  vegetable,  and  ani- 
mal existence,  and  dependent  upon  it  as  the  child  is  dependent 
upon  the  mother's  womb.  Within  the  whole  range  of  my  sub- 
jective feeling  and  knowledge  I  never  for  an  instant  stand  aloof 
from  nature  or  outside  of  it,  looking  down  upon  it,  that  is  to 
say,  I  am  never  in  the  least  objective  to  it.  On  the  contrary, 
I  invariably  stand  under  it,  or  inside  of  it ;  I  am  in  fact  rigidly 
shut  up  or  included  in  it,  and  yearn  towards  its  instruction 
as  devoutly  as  the  child  yearns  towards  its  mother's  breasts. 
In  short,  nature,  so  far  as  my  feeling  and  knowledge  are  con- 
cerned, is  wholly  and  intensely  objective  to  me,  shaping  my  sub- 
jectivity or  giving  it  lavish  body  just  as  the  mother  shapes  the 
fruit  of  her  womb,  and  builds  it  up  or  fills  it  out  with  her  own 
ungrudging  substance. 

Thus  by  creation  I  am  in  myself,  in  my  own  right,  a  helpless 
subject  of  nature,  being  dependent  upon  her  stringent  objectivity 
for  all  that  I  feel  and  know,  for  all  that  I  consciously  am  and 
enjoy.  If  accordingly  nature  did  not  exist  or  appear  to  me  in 
all  her  sensibly  contrasted  forms  of  light  and  dark,  hot  and  cold, 
high  and  low,  hard  and  soft,  rough  and  smooth,  great  and  small, 
strong  and  weak,  beautiful  and  ugly,  artless  and  cunning,  inno- 
cent and  noxious,  pleasant  and  painful,  my  animal  sensibility 
would  afford  no  anchorage  to  my  moral  instincts,  or  those  ra- 
tional intuitions  of  good  and  evil  in  human  character,  upon 
which  all  my  subsequent  knowledges  of  spiritual,  celestial,  and 
divine  things  are  of  necessity  to  be  moulded.  If  I  had  had  no 
sensible  observation  of  the  difference  between  serpent  and  dove, 
fox  and  sheep,  wolf  and  lamb,  I  should  lack  all  basis  of  dis- 
crimination in  regard  to  my  own  rational  or  moral  attributes ; 
all  ground  for  my  subsequent  recognition  of  myself  as  a  moral 
agent,  or  for  that  discrimination  of  men  into  good  and  evil, 
true  and  false,  wise  and  simple,  by  which  our  conception  of 
moral  existence  or  human  unity  is  generated.  If  my  senses 
did  not  familiarize  me  with  the  treachery  of  the  serpent  na- 
ture and  the  innocence  of  the  dove  nature  —  if,  in  short,  my 
sensible  experience  did  not  furnish  my  rational  understanding 


THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  37 

with  a  complete  livery  or  symbolism  of  abstract  human  nature, 
with  an  infinitely  modulated  key  wherewith  to  unlock  all  the 
secret  chambers  of  the  human  heart,  all  the  infinite  possibilities 
of  character  among  men  —  I  should  be  forever  destitute  of  mor- 
al perception,  should  never  be  able  in  thought  to  attribute  good 
and  evil,  truth  and  falsity,  either  to  myself  or  others ;  because 
thought  is  impossible  without  language ;  and  language  derives 
all  its  substance  or  body  from  things,  or  the  contents  of  our  sen- 
sible experience.* 

Such  is  Swedenborg's  idea  of  nature,  and  the  relation  of 
strict  subservience  it  bears  to  our  mental  development.  He 
regards  it  as  a  mere  though  exact  and  copious  hieroglyph  of 
spiritual  existence  ;  a  living  inventory,  so  to  speak,  or  exquisite 
picture-language,  revealing  all  the  otherwise  ineffable  mysteries 
of  that  marriage  of  the  divine  and  human  natures  which  alone 
constitutes  the  spiritual  creation.  It  is  a  literal  record,  a  faithful 
correspondence  to  sense,  of  whatsoever  rationally  befalls  the 
intercourse  of  infinite  creator  and  finite  creature  in  inward 
invisible  depths  of  being ;  so  that  if  we  once  attain  to  an  ade- 
quate doctrine  of  nature,  or  a  just  intellectual  insight  of  the 
stupendous  rational  uses  she  subserves,  we  shall  possess  an  in- 
fallible clew  to  all  spiritual  problems. 

In  short,  Swedenborg  holds  nature  to  a  strict  and  abject 
REVELATION  of  the  creative  perfection,  and  utterly  denies  it  all 
substantive  functioning.  Only,  as  all  the  life  of  nature  culmi- 
nates in  the  human  or  moral  form,  so  nature  as  a  divine  revela- 
tion becomes  of  necessity  complicated  with  man's  historic  evolu- 
tion ;  and  it  is  not  until  history  consequently  has  attained  to  its 
apogee  in  the  advent  of  human  society  or  brotherhood  upon  the 
earth,  that  nature  is  able  at  last  to  justify  her  apocalyptic  pre- 
tension, and  vindicate  the  infinite  goodness,  truth,  and  beauty 
which  have  always  lain  concealed  under  our  native  egotism,  lust, 
and  vanity. 

But  we  must  not  anticipate  our  subject. 

*  Language  is  an  instinctive  manifestation  of  mind  or  spirit  in  nature.  It  is  the 
instinctive  effort  of  the  human  mind  to  reproduce  itself — to  realize  its  own  sole 
unity  —  in  the  universality  of  nature's  phenomena. 


38  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBOKG. 


VI. 

I 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  a  reader  unused  to  the  line  of  thought 
here  exposed  may  conceive  it  liable  to  a  charge  of  pantheism. 
But  it  will  be  quite  as  easy  to  show  that  there  is  no  real  ground 
for  such  an  imputation.  What  is  the  essence  of  pantheism  ? 
It  consists  in  making  creation  a  direct,  not  a  redemptive  process 
of  the  divine  power ;  in  making  the  creature  continuous,  as  it 
were,  from  the  creator.  That  is  to  say,  it  denies  him  the  very 
boon  of  natural  or  subjective  identity,  upon  which,  according  to 
Swedenborg,  his  spiritual  or  objective  individuality  is  inevitably 
conditioned ;  and  so  leaves  his  creation,  in  any  honest  sense  of 
the  word,  as  completely  indeterminate  or  unavouched,  and  in- 
deed unattempted,  as  the  generation  of  a  child  would  be,  which 
claimed  a  paternal  or  causative  action,  but  disallowed  a  maternal 
or  constitutive  reaction.  Thus  Hegel  bases  his  ontology  upon 
the  identity  of  being  and  nothing,  i.  e.  he  makes  being  (the 
creator)  a  logical  evolution  of  not-being  (the  creature)  :  so  that 
creation  is  no  actual  vivification  of  the  created  nature  by  the 
creator,  whereby  the  creature's  spiritual  or  individual  conjunc- 
tion with  the  creator  becomes  assured,  but  is  on  the  contrary  a 
grossly  illusory  appearance  whereby  the  creator,  under  cover  of 
a  creaturely  disguise,  attains  himself  to  subjective  consciousness, 
and  leaves  his  creature  proportionably  defrauded.  He  thus 
utterly  falsifies,  or  degrades  into  childish  make-believe,  the  great 
fact  of  a  natural  creation  which  is  fundamental  to  Swedenborg's 
scheme  of  thought ;  for  he  interprets  what  appears  to  be  crea- 
tion into  the  so-called  creator's  essential  incapacity  to  be  himself, 
without  a  perpetual  fillip  from  the  so-called  creature.  He  con- 
cedes, of  course,  a  quasi  reality  to  the  creature ;  but  as,  upon  his 
theory,  the  creator  himself  is  no  objective  but  a  purely  subjective 
or  selfish  style  of  being,  so  he  cannot  really  exist  or  go  forth 
from  himself  in  lower  subject  forms ;  and  the  creature  conse- 
quently remains  void,  not  only  of  real  objectivity,  but  of  true  sub- 
jectivity as  well.  Like  all  pantheists  or  idealists,  Hegel  commits 
the  common  but  abject  blunder  of  invariably  objectifying  to  his 
own  imagination  the  contents  of  consciousness,  or  what  after  all  is 
only  the  subjective  side  of  existence  ;  and  hence  regards  the  pre- 


THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG.  39 

tension  of  the  me  as  absolute  and  not  contingent.  And  knowing 
but  one  legitimate  absolute  —  but  one  real  objectivity — he  does 
not  hesitate  a  moment  to  run  all  phenomenal  individuality  into 
that,  so  making  the  creative  process  to  mean  henceforth,  not  the 
orderly  and  fruitful  marriage  of  the  creative  and  created  natures 
in  every  form  of  social  and  aBsthetic  action,  but  a  peevish,  snarling, 
and  bewildered  muddle  of  the  two  in  a  hopeless  effort  to  escape 
from  each  other's  grasp,  or  accomplish  each  other's  extinction. 

No  doubt  if  Swedenborg  set  out  from  similar  intellectual  data 
to  these,  he  would  not  be  long  in  reaching  a  similar  result.  But 
his  intellectual  principles  run  strikingly  counter  to  those  of 
idealism  or  pantheism.  That  is  to  say,  the  me  or  subjective 
element  has  not  the  slightest  claim,  in  his  hands,  to  the  finality 
or  absoluteness  which  superficial  observers  ascribe  to  it.  He 
maintains,  on  the  contrary,  its  essential  contingency  to  a  higher 
outlying  objectivity,  or  makes  its  total  reality  lie  in  the  use  it 
promotes  to  such  objectivity.  He  has  no  trouble,  accordingly, 
in  demonstrating  the  unimpeachable  veracity  of  our  natural 
consciousness,  since  he  makes  it  a  necessary  implication  of  God's 
objective  work  in  creation  ;  an  indispensable  means  to  an  eternal 
spiritual  conjunction  of  creator  and  creature,  and  hence  itself 
instinct  with  infinite  love  and  wisdom. 

And  yet,  though  Swedenborg  is  no  pantheist  —  though  his 
doctrine  of  the  Divine  Natural  Humanity  betrays  no  lurking 
taint  of  idealism,  but  sturdily  repugns  all  commingling  and  con- 
fusion of  infinite  and  finite,  creator  and  creature,  in  creation  — 
it  must  be  owned,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  that  he  has 
done  almost  nothing  himself  to  help  out  the  logic  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  evidently  considers  his  duty  to  the  reader  discharged 
by  simply  affirming  the  situation  itself.  Nor  is  any  one  entitled, 
as  I  conceive,  to  take  up  the  least  quarrel  with  him  on  this 
score  ;  for  his  purpose  in  writing  was  not  synthetic  or  inductive, 
but  purely  analytic  or  deductive.  It  was  not  to  argue  princi- 
ples, but  simply  to  state  and  illustrate  them  by  facts  of  experi- 
ence and  observation,  leaving  the  reader  to  do  the  needful 
argumentation  for  himself  according  to  the  wants  of  his  heart 
and  the  measure  of  his  understanding.  And  the  reason  of  this 
reserve  is  palpable.  For  I  cannot  remind  the  reader  too  often 
for  his  own  advantage,  that  Swedenborg  was  all  simply  a  seer, 


40  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

and  in  no  sense  a  dogmatist  or  "  thinker."  That  is  to  say,  the 
grand  truth  he  reports  to  us  —  the  truth  of  God's  natural  hu- 
manity —  is  neither  a  truth  of  sense  like  pleasure  and  pain,  nor 
a  truth  of  science  like  equality  and  difference,  nor  yet  a  truth 
of  conscience  like  good  and  evil,  but  exclusively  a  truth  of  life 
or  spiritual  perception  :  of  which  therefore  no  one  can  ever 
become  convinced  by  any  amount  of  reasoning,  but  only  by  a 
process  of  the  strictest  inward  growth  or  refinement.  "  What 
you  call  nature"  —  says  Swedenborg  in  effect  —  "what  you 
call  nature,  and  suppose  to  be  infinite  in  extent  and  eternal 
in  duration,  has  really  no  existence  in  itself,  but  is  a  pure  super- 
stition of  our  ignorance  and  folly  ;  all  that  is  real  about  it  being 
the  providential  use  it  promotes  as  such  superstition  to  our  self- 
consciousness.  It  has  an  apparent  truth  in  itself,  a  truth  to  our 
senses,  but  it  is  void  of  absolute  truth,  being  a.  sheer  accommo- 
dation or  concession  of  the  divine  love  and  wisdom  to  our  spir- 
itual fatuity.  If  accordingly  we  now  saw  with  spiritual  instead 
of  carnal  eyes,  we  should  no  longer  discern  this  dead  immova- 
ble nature,  but  see  in  the  place  of  it  an  infinite  Man,  instant 
creator  and  redeemer  of  all  men,  carnally  crucified  no  doubt 
and  buried  from  sight  under  all  the  hallucinations  of  our  native 
selfishness  and  conceit,  but  spiritually  resurgent  and  shining 
forth  as  a  risen  sun  in  every  reality  of  our  social  or  regenerate 
experience  and  activity." 

And  how  could  any  mere  logical  skill  avail  to  make  a  doc- 
trine so  shocking  to  prejudice  —  in  fact  so  intellectually  revolu- 
tionary —  as  this,  acceptable  to  minds  unprepared  by  living 
culture  to  receive  it  ?  But  though  one  may  not  hope  to  convey 
the  vital  truth  of  the  doctrine  to  the  understanding  of  another, 
as  you  would  convey  a  mathematical  formula  to  his  memory,  it 
may  nevertheless  be  quite  within  one's  competence  to  dissipate 
some  of  the  prominent  fallacies  and  fantasies  which  hinder  its 
reception.  And  this  humble  function  I  shall  now,  to  the  best 
of  my  ability,  endeavor  to  discharge. 


VII. 

Let  us  begin  by  rightly  interpreting  to  ourselves  the  nature 
of  the  selfhood  which  God  is  said  to  give  us,  as  the  condition  of 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  41 

our  perfect  spiritual  fellowship  with  himself.  That  is,  let  us  be 
sure  to  view  it  as  a  composite,  not  a  simple,  phenomenon ;  as  a  strict 
fact  of  conscience  indeed  primarily,  and  only  by  inference  or 
derivation  thence  a  fact  of  science.  We  read  in  the  book  of 
Genesis  that  "  God  created  man  in  his  image  ;  in  the  image  of 
God  created  he  him ;  male  and  female  created  he  them."  Now 
the  composite  character  here  ascribed  to  human  nature  in  the 
abstract  —  for  as  yet,  according  to  the  record,  no  concrete  man 
existed  upon  the  earth  to  till  the  ground,  Adam,  much  more  Eve, 
being  still  unformed  —  must  be  determined  of  course  by  what 
it  is  said  to  image,  namely,  the  creative  perfection.  Man  is  by 
creation  an  image  of  God,  and  as  such  image  he  is  both  male 
and  female.  What  connection  is  there  between  these  two  facts  ? 
What  justification,  in  other  words,  does  the  creative  perfection 
afford  to  this  alleged  duality  in  the  creature  ?  Swedenborg 
is  full  of  instruction  on  this  point  to  every  one  who  has  caught 
a  glimpse  of  the  profound  spiritual  or  philosophic  meaning  which 
underlies  the  mystical  letter  of  revelation,  and  I  beg  my  reader's 
attention  while  I  seek  to  reproduce  it. 

The  origin  of  all  created  existence,  according  to  Swedenborg, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  is  infinite  or  perfect  love :  meaning  by 
that,  a  love  so  essentially  unlimited  by  selfish  or  prudential  re- 
gards as  to  be  spontaneously  creative.  An  infinite  or  perfect 
love,  by  his  showing,  is  a  purely  objective  love,  i.  e.  it  is  so 
intent  upon  the  blessing  of  others  as  to  be  utterly  indifferent  to 
self.  It  is  a  love  so  essentially  untainted  with  subjective  ends 
as  to  find  its  supreme  felicity  in  communicating  itself  to  others 
created  from  itself,  in  whom  it  may  be  and  forever  abide  as  in 
itself. 

But  obviously  a  love  of  this  infinite  quality  implies  a  propor- 
tionate wisdom  to  carry  it  out.  For  it  can  never  realize  itself 
in  action,  save  by  vivifying  the  nature  of  the  creature  in  a  man- 
ner so  absolute  or  thorough,  as  to  make  him  seem  to  himself 
an  unquestionable  subject  of  nature,  and  lead  him  therefore 
instinctively  to  revolt  at  the  imputation  of  direct  creatureship. 
And  what  infinite  skill  or  address  is  requisite  to  accomplish  such 
a  result  I  What  an  infinite  wisdom,  what  a  stupendous  order, 
must  the  universe  of  existence  exhibit,  in  order  that  the  creature 
of  God  may  find  himself  there  without  a  risk  of  mistake  or  mis- 


42  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

conception  ;  may  arrive  at  a  form  of  consciousness  so  definite 
and  absolute,  as  to  defy  the  faintest  suspicion  in  his  mind  of  the 
real  truth  of  the  case,  and  leave  him  on  the  contrary  so  compla- 
cently self-poised  as  to  render  him  an  eternally  fit  subject  of 
God's  spiritual  indwelling  ! 

Our  own  love,  finite  and  imperfect  as  it  is,  illustrates,  in  its 
way,  the  hierarchical  adjustment  here  alleged  between  the  di- 
vine love  and  wisdom.  Our  love  is  practically  true  and  perfect, 
just  as  its  action  is  guided  by  intelligence,  by  a  judicious  esti- 
mate of  the  wants  of  those  we  love.  I  may  love  my  friend 
with  what  seems  to  myself  a  pure  love ;  but  if  I  am  not  previ- 
ously well  informed  in  the  nature  of  my  friend  and  the  needs 
that  illustrate  it,  my  love  will  go  forth  in  very  unwise  acts,  and 
probably  do  him  more  harm  than  good.  Just  so  of  the  divine 
love.  It  would  be  utterly  incapable  of  realizing  itself  in  action, 
unless  it  were  methodized  by  a  proportionate  wisdom,  based 
upon  an  unflinching  experimental  acquaintance  with  the  nature 
of  those  whom  it  would  serve.  Were  it  not  thus  methodized, 
thus  schooled  or  guided,  it  would  of  course  flow  forth  blindly  or 
without  measure,  in  utter  indifference  to  any  faculty  of  reaction 
and  hence  of  reception  on  the  part  of  its  objects,  and  would 
consequently  deluge  or  drown  out  under  its  merciless  insane 
floods  the  very  seeds  it  was  intended  to  fertilize.  The  divine 
love  then  glorifies  itself —  i.  e.  avouches  its  essential  perfection 
as  love  —  by  embodying  itself  in  the  lineaments  of  a  perfect 
wisdom  —  a  wisdom  so  intimately  conditioned  upon,  or  bound  up 
with,  the  nature  of  those  to  whom  its  activity  is  addressed,  as  to 
be  necessarily  formative  of  it. 

Understand  me.  The  nature  in  question  is  confessedly  a 
created  one.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  in  itself  sheer  and  absolute 
naught,  being  dependent  for  whatsoever  appearances  of  life  it 
exhibits  upon  a  wholly  gratuitous  quickening  received  at  the 
divine  hands.  Practically  then,  or  at  bottom,  the  divine  wis- 
dom is  only  the  divine  love  manifesting  itself  in  creaturely  form  ; 
existing  or  going  forth  in  the  endlessly  diversified  lineaments  of 
the  created  nature ;  endowing  its  creature  with  an  apparently 
absolute  selfhood,  with  a  seemingly  unconditioned  consciousness. 
It  is  in  fact  the  creative  love  alienating  itself  from  itself  in  the 
interest  of  the  creature's  identity.  Swedenborg  accordingly 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  43 

always  calls  wisdom  or  truth  the  manifestation  which  the  divine 
love  makes  of  itself  in  creation ;  the  inevitable  existere  (going- 
forth)  of  the  infinite  uncreated  esse  in  the  nature  of  its  own 
finite  creature ;  hence  the  middle-term,  matrix,  mould,  or  means 
by  which  the  creative  love  energizes  the  spiritual  creation,  or 
brings  forth  results  every  way  congruous  with  its  own  infini- 
tude. 

There  is  clearly  no  escape  for  the  creative  love  from  the  obli- 
gation here  imposed,  short  of  renouncing  its  infinitude.  If  it 
would  give  itself  unstintedly  to  the  creature,  if  it  would  make 
itself  over  to  him  in  the  plenitude  of  its  own  resources,  it  must 
first  of  all  give  him  subjective  identity  or  projection  from  itself. 
The  creature  is  in  himself  or  by  nature  simply  zero ;  and  if 
therefore  the  creative  love  would  communicate  itself  with  all 
its  unimaginable  potencies  and  felicities  to  him,  it  must  first 
of  all  quicken  him  within  all  the  compass  of  this  natural  destitu- 
tion of  his,  and  so  afford  him  a  true  ground  of  consciousness 
adequate  to  all  the  needs  of  his  ultimate  spiritual  renovation,  or 
reaction  towards  the  creator.  Thus  our  natural  self-love  and 
worldliness  must  inevitably  degrade  the  creative  wisdom  to  our 
own  level,  must  infallibly  impose  upon  it  the  aspect  of  "  a  man 
of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief."  But  surely  no  blame 
can  by  possibility  attach  to  us  on  this  account,  since  we  are  not 
our  own  creation,  but  God's.  On  the  contrar}^  only  a  higher 
glory  accrues  in  this  way  to  the  creative  name,  which  cheerfully 
encounters  all  possible  opprobrium,  in  order  that  the  creature 
who  is  unconscious  of  the  love  which  thus  humbles  itself  to  his 
service  may  thereby  at  least  come  to  self-consciousness,  and  in 
that  acquisition  possess  the  pledge  of  his  eventually  perfect  spir- 
itual conjunction  with  the  creator. 

All  this,  I  repeat,  is  an  obligation  of  the  creative  love  growing 
out  of  its  own  perfection.  That  love  cannot  become  truly  op- 
erative —  that  is  to  say,  it  cannot  realize  its  own  majestic  spir- 
itual ends  —  save  in  so  far  as  it  actually  vivifies  the  nature  of 
the  creature  ;  and  to  vivify  the  nature  of  the  creature  means 
to  quicken  his  absolute  and  essential  want  or  finiteness  in  a 
manner  so  ungrudging,  as  that  he  may  feel  an  instinct  of  life 
within  him,  or  claim  to  exist  by  simple  right  of  nature,  as  it 
were,  and  without  any  direct  divine  interposition.  In  carrying 


44  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

out  this  obligation  the  creative  love  undergoes  of  necessity  the 
utmost  obscuration  or  humiliation.  For  how  shall  it  succeed  in 
quickening  our  finite  nature  —  in  vivifying  with  its  own  un- 
stinted substance  our  yawning  and  rapacious  appetites  and  pas- 
sions—  without  ipso  facto  assuming  the  responsibility  of  our 
natural  infirmities,  sufferings,  and  griefs,  without  for  the  time 
being  taking  upon  itself  the  burden  of  all  our  iniquities,  trans- 
gressions, and  sins  ?  Thus  it  is  by  no  means  in  itself  that  the 
creative  goodness  incurs  humiliation,  but  only  in  us  ;  that  is  to 
say,  in  its  manifested  aspect,  or  as  it  is  reproduced  in  created 
form,  and  submits  to  be  reviled,  persecuted,  and  crucified  at  the 
will  of  its  own  dependent  but  wholly  unconscious,  incredulous, 
and  ungrateful  offspring.  In  short,  it  experiences  no  humilia- 
tion in  its  own  essential  or  absolute  character  as  love  or  good- 
ness, but  only  in  its  existential  or  contingent  aspect  as  truth,  the 
truth  of  form  or  appearance  it  takes  on  in  our  natural  vivifica- 
tion.  It  is  humiliated  in  us  exclusively,  at  the  hands  of  our 
essential  shabbiness  and  imperfection,  our  native  egotism,  tyran- 
ny, and  lust.  It  is,  however,  a  humiliation  none  the  less  real 
and  necessary  on  that  account,  since  our  creation,  or  coming  to 
natural  consciousness,  is  inexorably  conditioned  upon  it ;  and 
without  it  we  should  have  missed  all  those  capacities  of  spiritual 
life  to  which  that  consciousness  furnishes  the  indispensable  an- 
chorage. 

We  can  now  see  our  way  very  clearly,  I  think.  For  evi- 
dently the  creative  wisdom,  in  going  forth  into  actual  manifesta- 
tion, or  descending  into  created  form,  must  be  above  all  things 
else  solicitous  to  guarantee  the  integrity  of  the  creature's  con- 
sciousness, or  dike  out  his  personality  against  any  chance  leak- 
age (endosmosis)  of  the  infinite  divine  substance.  The  crea- 
ture, regarded  on  his  natural  side,  incurs  no  danger  but  from 
the  creator,  in  whom  he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being,  and 
who  might,  accordingly,  if  his  love  had  the  slightest  subjective 
infirmity,  or  were  in  the  least  conceivable  degree  debilitated  by 
a  regard  to  self,  incontinently  drown  him  out  at  any  moment. 
Thus  the  creator  is  bound  by  the  interest  of  his  own  good-name, 
steadfastly  to  abjure  every  incursion  into  the  creature's  territory, 
diligently  to  withhold  himself  from  all  interference  with  the 
creature's  consciousness,  let  its  actual  untried  issues  be  what  they 


THE  SECKET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  45 

will ;  though  they  should  plunge  him,  if  need  be,  into  the  em- 
brace of  death  and  hell.  To  be  created  means,  so  far  as  the 
creature  is  concerned,  to  attain  to  subjective  identity,  to  be  sep- 
arated from  the  infinite  by  becoming  his  own  finite  conscious 
self;  and  as  nature  is  the  exclusive  medium  of  this  creaturely 
experience,  so  no  matter  to  what  universality  of  dimensions  na- 
ture enlarges  us,  our  finite  consciousness  will  never  be  enfeebled 
but  only  strengthened  thereby,  while  our  sensible  remoteness 
from  the  infinite  will  be  all  the  while  most  agreeably  caressed, 
soothed,  and  flattered.  But  let  the  least  ray  of  the  infinite  sub- 
stance penetrate  the  deep  divine  darkness  of  our  finite  con- 
sciousness—  the  dense  divine  obliviousness  upon  which  that 
consciousness  is  moulded,  or  out  of  which  it  is  fashioned  —  in- 
stantly the  total  heat  and  light  of  our  life  vanish,  and  nature, 
with  all  her  wealth  of  unnumbered  worlds,  shrivels  from  sight 
like  a  scroll  in  a  furnace. 

Now  the  armor  of  proof  in  which  the  creative  wisdom  arrays 
the  created  consciousness,  in  order  to  guard  its  integrity,  is  con- 
cisely hinted  to  our  perception  when  we  are  told  that  "  Grod 
creates  man  male  and  female" :  the  male  in  this  collocation  being 
the  grand  cosmical  or  unconscious  man  designated  by  the  latin 
word  homo,  and  embracing  the  entire  realm  of  physics  from  the 
lowest  mineral  up  to  the  highest  animal  form  of  existence ;  and 
the  female  being  the  petty  domestic  or  conscious  man,  desig- 
nated by  the  latin  word  vir,  and  embracing  the  entire  realm  of 
our  free  and  normal  historic  evolution.*  For  by  this  concise 
statement  is  signified  that  the  creator  endows  his  creature  with 
an  essentially  finite  genesis,  or  suspends  his  self-consciousness 
upon  a  strict  equilibrium  between  the  element  of  identity  or 
universality  in  his  nature,  and  that  of  difference  or  individual- 
ity ;  between  the  element  of  force  or  necessity,  and  that  of  free- 
dom or  contingency ;  between  the  interests  of  the  broadest 
humanity  in  short  and  those  of  the  narrowest  conventional  vir- 
tue. And  surely  nothing  can  so  effectually  separate  creature 
from  creator  as  his  subjection  to  this  finite  experience.  For  in 

*  It  is  the  identical  contrast  which  is  expressed  by  the  antagonism  of  Nature  and 
History,  and  by  the  terms  "  physical  or  organic  "  and  "  moral  or  voluntary  "  life, 
applied  to  man.  The  same  contrast  enlivens  the  graduated  meaning  we  attach  to 
the  phrases  a  humane  and  a  virtuous  man. 


46  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

the  creator  love  and  wisdom,  heart  and  head,  force  and  freedom, 
justice  and  mercy,  universality  and  individuality,  are  one  and 
inseparable,  and  it  is  only  in  the  creature  that  the  two  principles 
are  found  in  envenomed  mutual  hostility,  being  held  both  alike 
in  rigid  abeyance  to  that  purely  empirical  reconciliation  with 
each  other,  which  is  signified  by  the  social  destiny  of  the  race. 

Here  then,  at  last,  we  have  it.  To  be  created  male  and 
female  is  to  have  a  finite  genesis,  is  to  be  conscious  of  one's  self 
as  the  neutrality  or  indifference  of  two  forces  as  wide  apart  as 
zenith  and  nadir,  or  heaven  and  hell.  And  to  have  a  finite  gen- 
esis is  to  be  only  an  image  of  God,  and  consequently  to  stand  in 
subjective  antagonism  to  him,  as  the  image  necessarily  stands  in 
subjective  antagonism  to  its  original.  Man  is  the  image  of  God 
only  as  finitely  constituted,  i.  e.  when  the  fire  of  self-love  in 
his  nature  disputes  the  sway  of  universal  love ;  and  this  is  to  be 
completely  undivine,  is  to  be  the  exact  logical  opposite  of  God. 
The  image  of  God  is  a  projection  of  the  divine  personality  or 
character  on  some  foreign  substance.  It  is  not  God,  but  only 
what  God  appears  to  be  in  a  form  of  opposition  to  himself,  i.  e. 
in  created  form.  It  is  by  no  means  what  he  is  in  himself;  on 
the  contrary,  it  is  precisely  what  he  is  not  in  himself,  but  exclu- 
sively in  others  created  from  himself.  To  be  God  is  to  be  essen- 
tially infinite,  i.  e.  it  is  to  be  love  without  any  alloy  of  self;  a 
love  that  invariably  loses  itself  in  its  object.  To  be  an  image 
of  God,  on  the  other  hand,  is  to  be  essentially  finite,  i.  e.  it  is 
to  be  love  upon  a  basis  or  background  of  self;  it  is  to  be  self- 
love  in  fact,  a  love  that  invariably  seeks  itself  in  its  object.  My 
love  is  organic,  therefore  passionate  or  coerced,  leading  me  to 
subjugate  all  that  is  objective  to  me  to  the  compass  of  my  own 
subjectivity.  The  divine  love  is  inorganic,  and  therefore  free  or 
unimpassioned,  tending  evermore  to  the  enfranchisement  of  its 
proper  objects  from  itself,  or  the  investing  them  with  their  own  in- 
alienable subjectivity.  In  a  word,  the  one  love  is  altogether  ac- 
tive or  creative,  the  other  altogether  passive  or  reactive.  And 
the  whole  problem  of  creation  being  to  find  a  wall  of  partition  be- 
tween infinite  creator  and  finite  creature  which  shall  be  practically 
impervious  or  inviolable,  nothing  offers  so  clean  and  complete  a 
solution  of  the  problem  as  to  find  the  created  consciousness  itself 
constituting  that  wall :  the  creature  confessing  himself  no  direct 


THE   SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  47 

or  living  presentation  of  the  divine  perfection,  but  only  and  at 
best  an  indirect  or  negative  re-presentation  of  it ;  only  and  at 
best  an  inverse  subjective  form  and  dead  image  of  it. 


Till. 

And  now  let  us  sum  up  all  that  has  gone  before,  in  prepara- 
tion for  what  remains  behind. 

Man  is  the  true  creature  of  God,  the  creation  of  a  really  infi- 
nite love  and  wisdom.  But  the  creature  of  God,  regarded  in 
himself  or  subjectively,  must  either  be  nothing  —  in  which  case 
creation,  in  any  honest  sense  of  the  word,  is  impossible,  being 
swallowed  up  of  a  remorseless  idealism  —  or  else  he  must  be  the 
total  and  exact  opposite  of  his  creator.  For  it  is  contrary  to 
the  creative  perfection  to  conceive  any  existence  as  possible, 
which  in  itself  or  subjectively  simulates  that  perfection. 

Do  I  mean  then  to  say  that  the  creature  of  an  infinite  power 
is  shut  up  to  an  eternal  subjective  antagonism  with  his  creator  ? 
Unquestionably,  if  that  subjectivity  be  a  purely  natural  one  or 
end  with  itself;  that  is  to  say,  unless  his  nature  undergo  some 
modification  at  the  creative  hands,  by  lending  itself  to  his 
subsequent  spiritual  redemption.  The  strict  logic  of  the  case 
forbids  any  other  conclusion,  under  penalty  of  vitiating  the  in- 
tegrity of  creation.  If  any  two  notions  are  radically  opposed 
on  their  subjective  side,  it  is  those  of  creator  and  creature.  Ob- 
jectively, or  in  creation,  creator  and  creature  are  one  and  undis- 
tinguishable.  But  in  their  subjective  aspect  nothing  can  be  so 
intensely  antagonistic  to  the  conception  of  a  creator  as  that  of 
a  creature.  To  create  is  one  thing,  to  be  created  is  the  total 
and  exact  opposite  of  that  thing.  For  what  is  one's  nature  as  a 
creature  ?  It  is  abject  want  or  destitution.  To  be  created  is  to 
be  void  of  all  things  in  one's  self,  and  to  possess  them  only  in  an- 
other ;  and  if  I  am  the  creature  accordingly  of  an  infinite  cre- 
ator, my  want  of  course  must  be  infinite.  The  nature  of  a  thing 
is  what  the  thing  is  in  itself,  and  apart  from  foreign  interference. 
And  evidently  what  the  creature  is  in  himself  and  apart  from 
the  creator  is  sheer  nothingness,  that  is  to  say,  sheer  want  or 
destitution,  destitution  of  all  things,  whether  of  life,  of  existence, 
or  even  of  being.  So  that  to  give  the  creature  natural  form  or 


48  THE  SECEET  OF  SWEDENBOBG. 

selfhood,  is  merely  to  vivify  the  infinite  void  he  is  in  himself; 
is  merely  to  organize  in  living  form  the  universal  destitution  he 
is  under  with  respect  to  the  creative  fulness. 

I  attempt  no  apology,  accordingly,  for  Swedenborg's  doctrine 
on  this  subject,  but  applaud  it  with  all  my  heart.  I  perfectly 
agree  with  him  that  redemption  and  not  creation  avouches  the 
proper  glory  of  the  divine  name.  Creation  is  not,  and  cannot 
be,  the  final  word  of  the  divine  dealings  with  us.  It  has  at 
most  a  rigidly  subjective  efficacy  as  affording  us  self-conscious- 
ness, and  not  the  least  objective  value  as  affording  us  any  spir- 
itual fellowship  of  the  divine  perfection.  To  be  naturally  created 
indeed  —  to  be  created  an  image  of  God  —  is  to  be  anything  ex- 
cept a  spiritual  likeness  of  him.  The  law  of  the  image  is  sub- 
jectively to  invert  the  lineaments  of  its  original,  or  reflect  them 
in  so  negative  a  form  as  that  the  original  shall  be  wholly  lost 
sight  of  in  itself  and  the  image  alone  appear ;  all  that  is  light  in 
the  one  being  dark  in  the  other,  and  vice  versa.  And  to  be 
spiritually  like  God  is  inwardly  to  undo  this  subjective  inversion 
of  the  divine  perfection  to  which  we  find  ourselves  naturally 
born  or  created,  and  put  on  that  direct  or  objective  presentation 
of  it  to  which  we  are  historically  re-born  or  re-created.  The 
difference  between  the  two  states  is  the  exact  difference  between 
bondage  and  freedom,  between  being  a  servant  and  being  a  son. 
So  that  if  our  natural  creation  were  not  strictly  subservient  to 
something  infinitely  superior  to  itself,  we  should  remain  forever 
at  a  hopeless  though  unsuspected  spiritual  remove  from  God. 

Creation  necessarily,  as  we  have  seen,  mvolves  the  creator 
and  obscures  his  perfection,  in  the  exact  ratio  of  its  evolving  the 
creature  and  illustrating  his  imperfection.  Unless  therefore  the 
creature  himself  reproduce  the  creative  infinitude  concealed  in 
his  nature,  it  must  be  forever  obliterated  from  remembrance. 
The  bare  fact  of  his  creation  stamps  him  in  himself,  or  on  his 
subjective  side,  the  utter  uncompromising  enemy  of  his  creator ; 
and  unless  he  can  in  some  way  react  upon  himself,  or  rise  above 
his  natural  level,  the  level  of  his  proper  subjectivity,  that  enmity 
must  remain  forever  unappeased.  And  this  capacity  of  reaction 
in  the  creature  is  precisely  what  his  natural  division  into  male 
and  female  provides  for,  in  rendering  him  both  objective  and 
subjective  to  himself;  in  permitting  him  to  be  in  himself  both 


THE   SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  49 

the  proper  object  and  the  proper  subject  of  his  own  activity. 
The  creative  love  as  we  have  seen,  the  love  of  creator  to  creature, 
is  essentially  infinite,  as  being  without  any  taint  or  drawback  of 
self-love.  And  the  created  love,  the  love  of  creature  to  creator, 
is  essentially  finite,  being  a  pure  love  of  self,  untinged  by  any 
love  to  the  neighbor.  If  then  the  creative  wisdom  can  inwardly 
so  attemper  the  created  nature,  as  gradually  to  bend  this  subjec- 
tive love  of  the  creature,  or  supreme  regard  for  himself,  into  an 
objective  love  or  supreme  regard  for  society,  the  creature  will, 
ipso  facto,  become  unclad  of  his  native  corruption,  and  clothed 
upon  with  his  creator's  health.  And  it  is,  I  repeat,  exclusively 
to  provide  for  this  great  contingency  that  the  creature  is  created 
both  male  and  female ;  that  is  to  say,  both  organic  and  func- 
tional, static  and  dynamic,  generic  and  specific,  physical  and 
moral,  cosmical  and  domestic,  universal  and  particular,  public 
and  private,  outward  and  inward,  common  and  proper,  objective 
and  subjective.  For  the  reciprocal  opposition  of  these  elements 
is  so  great  as  to  leave  them  finally  no  choice  but  marriage ; 
that  is,  such  a  hierarchical  adjustment  of  their  conflicting  claims 
as  may  render  them  freely  prolific,  or  forever  fuse  them  in  the 
unity  of  a  new  nature.  This  spontaneous  marriage  of  man  as 
man  with  woman  as  woman  —  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  of 
the  objective  and  subjective,  or  physical  and  moral,  contents  of 
human  nature  —  is  what  is  meant  by  society,  which  is  the  con- 
summation of  human  destiny.  This  marriage  is  prolific  of  an 
entirely  new  self-consciousness  in  man  ;  amounts,  in  fact,  to  that 
new  creation  of  God  for  which  the  dumb  earth  has  so  long 
groaned  and  been  in  inward  unintelligent  travail ;  that  divine 
resurrection  in  our  flesh  which  will  ally  us  no  longer  negatively 
or  inversely,  but  positively  and  directly,  with  infinite  power, 
peace,  and  innocence. 

What  is  legitimately  meant  by  the  selfhood  or  subjectivity 
which  God  is  said  to  give  us  ought  now  to  be  clear.  No  sensible  or 
material  thing  is  meant,  no  outward  and  visible  quantity  what- 
ever, but  solely  a  fact  of  inward  life  or  consciousness  due  to  the 
essential  marriage  which  exists  in  creation  between  creator  and 
creature.  We  mean  by  it  that  inward  sense  of  freedom  and 
rationality  which  we  enjoy  as  men  by  virtue  of  God's  unstinted 
indwelling  in  our  nature,  and  without  which  we  should  soon 
4 


50  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

forfeit  every  vestige  of  the  human  form.  Selfhood,  personality, 
is  not  anything  which  you  can  sensibly  discern,  or  reduce  to 
mathematical  measurement,  for  it  is  a  fact  of  life  or  conscious- 
ness exclusively,  and  the  mathematics  deal  only  with  facts  of 
existence  or  sense.  Nothing  in  the  least  explains  it  short  of  the 
creative  truth,  the  truth  of  the  divine  NATURAL  humanity,  which 
teaches  us  that  what  God  creates  is  no  mere  pictured  or  sculptured 
reality,  like  the  works  we  glory  in  ;  nor  yet  any  mechanism, 
like  the  clocks  and  steam-engines  which  exercise  our  maturer 
genius  ;  but  a  purely  living  or  conscious  form,  which  freely  or 
of  its  own  nature  reacts  to  his  inspiration,  and  reproduces  in 
negative  or  inverse  imagery  every  feature  of  his  perfection.  No 
doubt  the  creature,  taught  by  his  senses,  denies  this  great  truth, 
or  separates  himself  to  his  own  thought  in  a  very  vital  manner 
from  the  creator.  But  all  this  is  a  childish  illusion  on  the  crea- 
ture's part,  due  to  his  native  ignorance  and  imbecility  in  spir- 
itual things ;  the  real  truth  of  the  case  being  all  the  while,  that 
when  he  feels  himself  to  be  most  absolute  and  independent,  he 
is  then  precisely  the  most  abject  puppet  or  dependent  creature 
of  the  creative  wisdom. 

This  fact  that  the  creature,  by  virtue  of  his  native  arrogance 
and  stupidity  in  divine  things,  inflates  himself  to  absolute  dimen- 
sions, ought  not  to  challenge  the  serious  intellectual  homage 
which  philosophers  are  wont  to  accord  it.  In  fact,  philosophy 
has  been  fed  hitherto  upon  excrementitious  food.  Men  have 
always  and  everywhere  so  persistently  denied  their  infantile 
simplicity  and  innocence,  in  eating  of  the  tree  of  finite  knowl- 
edge, as  really  to  fancy  themselves  the  source  of  their  own 
good  and  evil,  and  hence  to  exhibit  states  of  alternate  elation 
and  despair  towards  God,  which  reflect  the  gravest  discredit 
upon  his  stainless  name.  And  what  could  philosophy  do,  having 
no  higher  testimony  to  appeal  to,  and  disdaining  the  light  of 
revelation,  but  accept  this  garbage  of  the  moral  or  subjective 
consciousness  as  final  or  absolute,  and  proceed  to  live  upon  it 
as  upon  so  much  celestial  manna  ?  But  the  data  of  the  moral 
consciousness  are  a  ghastly  mockery  of  celestial  truth.  The 
angel,  according  to  Swedenborg,  is  so  far  from  cherishing  his 
moral  consciousness,  or  attributing  the  good  and  evil  he  is  made 
aware  of  in  his  own  bosom  to  himself,  that  he  habitually  refers 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  51 

the  former  to  the  lord,  and  the  latter  to  evil  association.  He 
is  invariably  described  by  Swedenborg  as  being  utterly  unwill- 
ing to  appropriate  to  himself  the  least  particle  of  good  or  of 
evil ;  because  he  finds  that  just  in  proportion  as  he  does  so  he 
forfeits  his  inmost  essential  peace  and  beatitude.  He  is  un- 
feignedly  averse  to  claiming  any  selfhood  or  personality  of  his 
own  ;  unfeignedly  averse  to  credit  himself  with  the  least  sub- 
jective discrimination  from  the  most  wanton  imp  of  satan.  For 
the  heavenly  atmospheres,  as  Swedenborg  reports  them,  are  so 
instinct  with  objective  use,  are  so  inspiriting  to  every  form  of 
productive  action,  that  every  one  who  respires  them  becomes 
liberated  from  his  finite  ties,  and  actively  associated  with  the 
infinite  power  and  loveliness.  And  how  shall  minds  thus  en- 
larged by  contact  with  the  real  substances  of  the  world  dimin- 
ish themselves  again  to  the  purely  figurative  and  fallacious 
dimensions  of  the  moral  or  subjective  consciousness  ?  Do  men 
who  have  known  at  last  what  life  truly  is  relish  it  so  little  as 
to  revert  deliberately  to  death  ? 

Bear  diligently  in  mind,  then,  that  our  natural  creation  is  a 
purely  spiritual  operation  of  God,  and  that  space  and  time,  which 
to  our  silly  thought  seem  so  essential  to  it,  are,  on  the  contrary, 
sheerly  existential  to  it,  as  abasing  it  to  the  level  of  our  sensu- 
ous cognizance.  They  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  our 
creation  in  the  way  of  involution,  but  only  in  that  of  the  most 
reverent  and  obedient  evolution.  It  involves  them  as  the  ex- 
pressive symbols,  as  the  patient  pliant  vassals,  of  human  affec- 
tion and  thought ;  while  they,  in  their  turn,  assiduously  evolve 
it,  as  having  no  primary  pertinence  to  themselves,  but  only  to 
the  sovereign  form  of  man.  Thus  our  natural  creation,  truly  or 
spiritually  regarded,  claims  the  dew  of  eternal  youth.  It  is  as 
fresh  and  vigorous  now,  at  this  day  and  in  this  land,  as  it  ever 
was  in  the  virgin  heart  of  Eden,  under  suns  whose  heat  and 
light  have  been  myriads  of  years  extinct. 


IX. 

I  do  not  see  how  the  least  doubt  of  my  meaning  can  now 
survive,  when  I  talk  of  God's  giving  us  natural  selfhood  or  sub- 
jective identity.  For  it  is  plain,  that  I  mean  to  allege  no  out- 


52  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

ward  and  finite,  but  an  inward  and  infinite,  giving  on  his  part ; 
in  fact,  just  that  complete  surrender  of  himself  to  us,  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  perfection,  which  constitutes  our  natural  creation, 
or  is  equivalent  to  our  being  vivified  by  him  in  all  the  height  and 
depth,  and  length  and  breadth,  of  our  native  oppugnancy  to  him. 
This  is  the  only  true  or  philosophic  conception  of  creation, 
namely,  the  abandonment  of  yourself  to  what  is  not  yourself 
in  a  manner  so  intimate  and  hearty,  as  that  you  thenceforth 
shall  utterly  disappear  within  the  precincts  of  its  existence  — 
shall  become  phenomenally  extinct  within  the  entire  realm  of  its 
personality  —  while  it  alone  shall  appear  to  be.  For  example, 
you  are  sometimes  said,  in  popular  parlance,  to  create  the  prod- 
ucts of  your  genius,  say  a  statue.  Now  your  creative  action 
here  restricts  itself  to  the  ideal  form  of  the  statue,  its  material 
substance  being  already  supplied  to  your  hand  in  nature.  Ac- 
cordingly, just  in  proportion  as  your  statue  is  faultless  in  point 
of  art  —  which  means,  just  as  its  opus  subjugates  its  materies, 
just  as  its  base  earthly  substance  becomes  indissolubly  wedded 
with,  or  glorified  into,  ideal  form  —  will  your  creative  power 
avouch  itself,  and  the  perfect  work  swallow  up  the  personality 
of  the  workman.  Just  so  with  the  divine  creation.  It  is  an 
utter,  total,  unstinted  self-abnegation  (as  it  must  always  appear 
to  our  selfish  intelligence)  on  the  part  of  the  infinite  love, 
whereby  the  creature  being  naturally  vivified  or  made  to  appear 
as  if  he  had  life  in  himself,  and  thereupon  freely  avouching  him- 
self the  impassioned  enemy  of  the  divine  infinitude,  the  creator 
is  seen  frankly  acquiescing  in  such  enmity  as  his  only  suitable 
or  worthy  ground  of  action,  and  proceeding  at  once  to  vindicate 
his  proper  power  by  converting  this  created  evil  and  falsity  into 
a  good  which  shall  be  infinite,  and  a  truth  which  shall  be  abso- 
lute. 

Perhaps  what  I  said  just  now  about  creation  always  and  of  ne- 
cessity appearing  to  our  eyes  to  be  a  self-denying  operation  of 
the  divine  love,  may  strike  the  reader  as  still  unproved.  Let 
me  then  briefly  try  to  make  good  to  his  understanding  the 
ground  of  this  proposition. 

When  we  call  God's  love  infinite  or  perfect,  what  do  we  mean 
by  that  predicate  ?  No  doubt  we  mean  something  essentially 
congruous  with  the  subject,  and  the  subject  of  the  predicate 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  53 

being  love,  we  can  only  mean  of  course  in  calling  it  infinite  or 
perfect,  to  allege  that  it  is  a  love  without  any  alloy  of  self;  that 
it  has  no  subjective  ends  ;  that  its  aims  are  altogether  objective, 
or  tend  to  the  aggrandizement  of  whatsoever  is  not  itself.  Now 
we  can  claim  no  intuitive  knowledge  of  such  love  as  this,  but 
only  a  reflective  one.  For  we  are  naturally  prone  to  love  our- 
selves primarily,  and  our  neighbor  derivatively,  so  that  if  any 
conflict  of  interests  diversify  our  intercourse,  it  costs  us  a  strong 
effort  of  self-denial  to  do  him  justice.  In  this  manner  self-deni- 
al, self-sacrifice,  has  become  to  our  minds  the  symbol  of  pure 
love  —  love  disengaged  from  sense  and  putting  on  spiritual  attri- 
butes. In  proportion  as  our  love  is  void  of  passion  or  claims  an 
active  quality,  it  involves  an  element  of  self-abasement,  or  dis- 
owns all  subjective  and  acknowledges  only  objective  ends.  No- 
toriously the  purest  form  of  passion  known  to  us  is  a  mother's  love 
for  her  child.  And  the  reason  is  that  there  is  ordinarily  far  more 
of  spontaneity  in  it  than  in  any  other  passion ;  that  it  habitually 
exhibits  a  greater  degree  of  self-forgetfulness.  And  this  being 
the  case  —  namely,  that  the  divine  love  is  the  pure  love  it  is 
because  it  is  ujnimpassioned,  or  has  no  selfish  ends,  being  wholly 
addressed  to  the  blessing  of  whatsoever  is  most  remote  from  and 
opposite  to  itself;  while  ours,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  impure 
thing  it  is,  because  it  is  a  merely  organic  or  passionate  love,  being 
addressed  to  selfish  ends,  that  is,  to  the  aggrandizement  of  such  as 
are  in  relations,  not  of  remoteness  and  opposition  to  ourselves, 
but  only  of  nearness  and  agreement  —  it  is  at  once  evident 
that  the  divine  love  must  either  remain  wholly  unknown  and 
impracticable  to  us,  or  else  must  reveal  itself  in  finite  imagery, 
in  lineaments  adapted  to  our  sensuous  intelligence,  and  so  alone 
find  its  chance  of  awakening  our  responsive  sympathy. 

This  was  all  I  meant  in  saying  that  the  creative  love  must 
always  wear  a  self-denying  aspect  to  our  natural  understanding. 
The  obligation  grows  out  of  the  inevitable  ignorance  and  inex- 
perience we  are  under  by  nature  in  divine  things  ;  and  unless 
therefore  the  creative  wisdom  tenderly  accommodated  itself  to 
these  natural  exactions,  we  should  remain  dead  to  the  faintest 
possibility  of  spiritual  life. 

But  now  that  I  have  made  this  explanation,  let  us  pre- 
pare for  a  new  aspect  of  our  subject,  and  begin  looking  at 


54  THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

creation  no  longer  in  its  strictly  universal  or  generic  aspect,  as 
a  descending  movement  of  the  divine  life  in  man,  but  in  its  par- 
ticular or  specific  aspect,  as  an  ascending  movement  of  that  life. 
Hitherto  we  have  been  more  intent  upon  the  statics  of  creation 
than  its  dynamics.  That  is  to  say,  we  have  been  looking  too 
exclusively  at  nature^  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  as  serving 
to  give  the  creature  selfhood  or  subjective  identity,  which  is  a 
conscience  of  alienation  from  (otherness  than)  his  maker.  But 
our  attention  is  due  in  at  least  an  equal  degree  to  history  also, 
as  an  emphatic  counter-movement  to  nature  in  the  interest  of 
the  creature's  spiritual  freedom  or  individuality,  whereby  he 
reacts  against  this  finite  impulsion,  and  seeks  to  reunite  himself 
with  the  infinite.  Nature  is  a  centrifugal  movement  of  the  cre- 
ative providence,  whereby  the  creature  becomes  projected  or 
set  off  to  his  own  consciousness  from  the  creator,  by  all  the 
breadth  of  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  existence.  History 
is  an  answering  centripetal  movement  of  the  same  providence, 
whereby  the  creature  becomes  gradually  lifted  out  of  his  min 
eral,  vegetable,  and  animal  thraldom,  into  properly  human  pro- 
portions, or  endowed  with  conscience.  And  creation  conse- 
quently would  be  very  inadequately  conceived  by  us,  if  we 
should  slight  either  of  these  majestic  and  coequal  factors,  either 
nature  or  history.  They  are  both  alike  essential  to  the  concep- 
tion, nature  as  symbolizing  its  finite  maternal  side,  history  its 
infinite  paternal  one ;  nature  as  supplying  the  generic  element, 
the  element  of  identity  in  the  creature  which  makes  him  objec- 
tive to  himself,  or  furnishes  the  fixed  immutable  ground  of  his 
consciousness,  and  history  as  supplying  the  specific  element, 
the  element  of  individuality  in  the  creature,  which  makes  him 
objective  to  God,  or  invests  him  with  moral  character,  i.  e. 
with  a  conscience  of  good  and  evil,  and  so  furnishes  the  free, 
contingent,  movable  ground  of  his  consciousness. 

Let  the  reader  diligently  note  the  force  of  what  has  here 
been  said.  Nature  and  history  are  both  alike  and  most  strictly 
involved  in  the  philosophic  idea  of  creation,  and  they  have  them 
selves  no  other  function  than  sedulously  to  evolve  it.  It  is  im- 
possible that  creation  should  really  take  place,  save  in  so  far  as 
it  takes  place  actually.  In  other  words,  the  creature  can  possess 
no  real  or  absolute  being  in  God,  save  in  so  far  as  he  possesses 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  55 

actual  or  phenomenal  existence  in  himself.  And  any  creation 
therefore  would  pronounce  itself  palpably  inchoate,  which  should 
pretend  to  establish  the  creature's  derivative  being  upon  any 
other  basis  than  that  of  his  own  underived  form,  or  avouch  his 
spiritual  individuality  by  any  other  evidence  than  that  of  his 
natural  identity.  Thus  nature  and  history  are  both  alike  neces- 
sary portals  of  the  true  or  spiritual  and  eternal  world ;  but  they 
are  nothing  more  than  portals,  and  furnish  no  glimpse,  save  in 
the  way  of  inverse  correspondence,  of  the  interior  things  belong- 
ing to  it.  They  are  both  alike  an  inevitable  preliminary  matrix 
or  mould  of  God's  spiritual  creation,  which  is  man  ;  but  they  are 
absolutely  nothing  whatever  but  such  actual  matrix  or  mould : 
nature,  in  its  direct  or  objective  bearing  upon  man,  attesting 
the  descent  of  the  creator  to  the  creature's  level ;  while  history, 
which  is  man's  subjective  protest  or  reaction  upon  nature,  attests 
the  creature's  consequent  rise  to  the  level  of  the  creator. 

This  is  that  dual  consciousness  which  man  is  said  to  own  by 
creation,  and  which  is  symbolized  in  sacred  writ  under  the  terms 
male  and  female  ;  the  former  term  corresponding  to  nature,  the 
latter  to  history.  *  His  nature,  simply  because  it  is  a  created 
one,  is  made  up  of  two  utterly  disproportionate  elements,  one 
infinite  and  absolute,  the  other  finite  and  contingent ;  one  active 
or  creative,  the  other  passive  or  reactive  ;  one  generic  or  uni- 
versal, the  other  specific  or  particular;  one  utterly  objective  or 
unconscious  of  self,  the  other  profoundly  subjective  or  self-con- 
scious. Such  is  man's  natural  genesis,  such  his  inevitable  make 
as  a  created  being.  Every  man,  by  virtue  of  his  natural  crea- 
tion, has  this  conjoint  inward  and  outward  consciousness,  this 
conjoint  objective  and  subjective  parentage,  i.  e.  claims  both  an 
implicit  community  or  identity  with  all  existence,  and  an  ex- 
plicit individuality  or  diiference  from  it. 

No  philosophy  accordingly  is  worth  a'  moment's  regard,  but 
confesses  itself  on  its  face  unspeakably  shallow  and  futile,  which 

*  The  reason  why  the  former  constitutes  a  descending  movement  of  providence, 
and  the  latter  an  ascending  one,  is  that  in  the  natural  man  (homo)  the  human  or 
specific  principle,  the  principle  of  individuality  (Eve),  which  allies  us  with  the 
inward  and  infinite,  is  subject  to  the  cosmical  or  generic  principle,  the  principle 
of  universality  (Adam),  which  allies  us  with  the  outward  and  finite;  while  in  the 
historic  and  moral  development  of  the  race  (vir)  the  latter  principle  serves,  and  the 
former  rules. 


56  THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

attempts  to  construct  a  doctrine  of  being  upon  the  assumed 
absoluteness  of  nature  and  history.  Real,  which  is  spiritual, 
existence  is  utterly  inexplicable  upon  any  such  basis,  since  the 
life  we  derive  from  nature  and  history  is  only  phenomenally 
ours,  while  in  reality  it  is  altogether  the  creator's  life  in  us. 
For  suppose  creation  fully  accomplished  in  the  exact  equation 
of  creator  and  creature ;  the  creature  after  all  has  no  real  but 
only  a  phenomenal  existence.  Suppose  the  creator,  on  his  part, 
to  have  furnished  the  creature  an  ample  basis  of  self-conscious- 
ness by  vivifying  his  nature,  or  graduating  it  to  his  sensuous 
recognition  under  the  successive  masks  of  mineral,  vegetable, 
and  animal  existence ;  and  suppose  the  creature,  on  his  side,  to 
have  arrived  consequently  at  the  amplest  and  most  vivacious 
self-consciousness.  What  then  ?  Why,  after  all,  the  creature 
has  not  attained  to  true,  but  only  to  phenomenal  being ;  for  how- 
ever much  he  alone  all  the  while  appears  to  be,  it  is  neverthe- 
less God  alone  who  all  the  while  really  is,  under  that  appearance. 
No  doubt  the  creature  seems  to  himself  absolutely  to  be,  to  be 
naturally,  as  it  were,  or  by  inherent  right ;  and  on  the  strength 
of  that  appearance  manages  to  simulate  spiritual  character  by 
freely  appropriating  good  and  evil  to  himself,  or  charging  him- 
self with  positive  merit  and  demerit  in  God's  sight.  But  he  is 
and  remains  a  mere  image  or 'shadow  of  real  existence.  The  self- 
hood or  freedom  which  he  feels  to  be  so  absolute  is  a  pure  provi- 
dential concession  to  him  in  the  interest  of  his  ultimate  emanci- 
pation from  nature  and  history,  or  his  eventual  spiritual  evolu- 
tion. It  is  all  the  while  God's  veritable  and  sole  life  in  his  na- 
ture, mercifully  consenting  to  appear  as  his  life.  It  is  the  crea- 
tive love  existing  or  going  forth  from  itself  in  creaturely  form ; 
and  although  the  form  or  appearance  thence  resulting  is  that  of 
the  creature  alone,  the  total  being  or  reality  of  the  appearance 
refers  itself  to  the  creator,  and  must  eventually  be  recognized 
in  that  light  by  the  creature,  unless  he  would  remain  forever 
swamped  in  spiritual  ignorance  and  folly.  What  an  egregious 
sciolism  accordingly  every  philosophy  must  present,  which  at- 
tempts to  account  for  existence  upon  its  own  data,  or  without 
deference  to  the  commanding  light  of  revelation  which  alone 
declares  its  true  raison  cT£tre. 

You  see  at  a  glance  then  what  a  profound  abyss,  to  Sweden- 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  57 

borg's  judgment,  separates  being  from  existence,  spirit  from 
nature.  You  see,  in  short,  how  infinitely  remote  from  spiritual 
sonship  to  God  our  natural  creation  leaves  us,  and  how  obligato- 
ry it  is  upon  him  therefore,  if  he  would  ever  spiritually  affiliate 
us  to  himself,  to  give  us  redemption  from  our  own  nature.  And 
this  great  redemption,  how  shall  it  ever  be  able  to  come  about? 
By  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  the  sphere  of  its  evolution  is 
restricted  to  the  limits  of  the  created  consciousness,  so  that  the  crea- 
tor can  command  absolutely  no  enginery  to  effect  it,  which  is 
not  supplied  exclusively  by  the  resources  of  that  consciousness. 
The  creator  is  bound  indeed  to  fulfil  the  obligation  by  his  own 
sheer  unassisted  might ;  but  this  might  will  be  weakness  save 
in  so  far  as  he  is  able  to  sink  himself  in  the  created  conscious- 
ness, or  make  the  creature's  unaffected  selfishness  and  cupidity 
the  all-sufficient  gauge  and  fulcrum  of  his  power.  How  then 
shall  this  grand  drama  of  redemption,  intimately  complicated  as 
it  is  with  the  immutable  laws  of  creation,  ever  be  conceived  as 
actually  traversing  those  laws,  so  as  to  bring  forth  the  most  defi- 
nite spiritual  issues  to  the  human  consciousness,  without  in  the 
slightest  degree  violating  their  sanctity,  or  enfeebling  their  va- 
lidity ? 

This  is  the  question  of  questions  to  the  philosophic  mind ;  and 
if  I  can  succeed  in  conveying  to  the  reader  even  a  clouded  ray 
of  the  light  I  get  from  Swedenborg  in  regard  to  it,  I  shall  not 
only,  I  am  persuaded,  have  given  him  a  key  to  all  the  meta- 
physic  doubts  which  vex  his  intellectual  progress,  but  I  shall 
have  supplied  him  a  grateful  stimulus  also  to  a  more  close,  ear- 
nest, and  energetic  prosecution  of  his  most  urgent  practical  duties, 
which  are  those  he  owes  to  the  great  truth  of  human  society, 
fellowship,  or  equality. 

X. 

History,  according  to  Swedenborg,  resolves  itself  into  the  ex- 
istence of  the  church  on  earth :  and  the  existence  of  the  church, 
spiritually  understood,  means  the  purgation  of  human  nature  by 
divine  power.  That  is  to  say,  there  could  have  been  no  such  thing 
as  an  historic  resurrection  of  the  human  consciousness,  but  man's 
life  must  always  have  remained  sunken  in  the  mud  of  mere  an- 
imality,  unless  our  natural  loves,  which  are  those  of  self  and  the 


58  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

world,  had  been  permitted  from  the  beginning  to  organize  them- 
selves in  religious  form,  and  assume  the  initiative  in  human  affairs 
under  a  quasi  divine  sanction.  The  necessity  of  this  providential 
permission  is  obvious.  For  if  by  nature  man  is  the  spiritual  oppo- 
site of  God  —  and  he  must  be  that  in  order  to  be  anything  at  all 
—  it  is  clear  that  he  can  never  be  brought  into  living  or  spiritual 
harmony  with  God,  unless  the  natural  loves  which  base  his 
action  become  interested  factors  in  that  result.  It  is  true  they 
will  be  very  infirm  factors,  but  they  are  nevertheless  the  only 
ones  the  case  admits  of,  since  it  is  evident  that  no  outward  con- 
straint can  be  practised  upon  a  spiritual  subject,  nor  any  change 
effected  in  him  without  his  own  consent  and  co-operation  being 
to  some  extent  enlisted.  It  is  natural  or  logical  enouo-h,  no 

O  &      " 

doubt,  in  the  potter,  to  spurn  the  clay  which  will  not  lend  itself 
to  his  plastic  advances ;  because  the  potter  does  not  stand  in  a 
creative,  but  only  in  a  formative  relation  to  the  work  of  his 
hands.  That  is  to  say,  he  does  not  himself  provide  the  clay 
out  of  which  his  work  is  to  be  fabricated,  but  only  the  mould  or 
form  into  which  the  clay  is  to  be  run.  But  it  would  be  ex- 
tremely derogatory  to  the  divine  name  to  suppose  him  quarrel- 
ling with  the  material  of  human  nature  out  of  which  alone  his 
spiritual  results  are  to  be  fashioned ;  for  he  stands  in  an  abso- 
lutely creative  relation  to  those  results.  That  is  to  say,  he  alone 
gives  us  physical  existence,  he  alone  vivifies  it,  animates  it  with 
selfhood,  or  renders  it  capable  of  moral  life ;  and  he  alone  con- 
sequently is  answerable  if  it  should  finally  prove  recreant  to  his 
spiritual  requirements. 

Never  accordingly  for  an  instant  does  Swedenborg  report  the 
creative  relation  towards  the  creature,  in  his  very  lowest  moral 
states,  as  a  quarrelsome  or  even  as  a  querulous  one.  On  the  con- 
trary he  invariably  represents  the  divine  love  as  never  breaking, 
but  always  most  tenderly  lending,  our  perverse  moral  states  to  the 
purposes  of  a  mercy  which  is  really  infinite  as  embracing  the  sal- 
vation of  the  whole  human  race,  and  which  otherwise  must  have . 
appeared  altogether  finite,  as  embracing  the  destiny  of  a  compara- 
tively few  persons.  Thus  heaven  and  hell,  as  portrayed  by  Swe- 
denborg's  impartial  pen,  argue — inasmuch  as  they  exist  only 
by  each  other's  antagonism  —  a  finite  love  in  the  creator ; 
that  is  to  say,  a  love  which  is  not  at  harmony  with  itself,  or  has 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  59 

no  unitary  end ;  and  hence  they  logically  confess  themselves  to 
be  mere  incidents  of  human  progress,  mere  stepping-stones  to 
the  end  which  God  proposes  to  himself  in  the  vivification  of  hu- 
man nature. 

"  The  lord's  love"  says  Swedenborg,  " is  the  salvation  of  the 
whole  human  race  "  ;  and  such  being  his  love,  such  also  must  be 
the  aim  of  his  providence.*  Its  salvation  from  what,  pray? 
Why,  from  the  spiritual  evils  and  falsities  which  are  strictly  in- 
cidental to  its  finite  experience,  or  its  innate  and  essential  igno- 
rance of  the  creative  name  and  ways.  Remember,  I  say  the 
race's  finite  experience  ;  for  the  race  of  course  comes  to  integral 
self-consciousness,  to  the  consciousness  of  its  own  unity,  only 
through  the  experience  of  its  individual  members  gradually 
inducting  human  society  or  fellowship.  The  race  itself  has  no 
existence  apart  from  the  individuals  which  compose  it,  and  hence, 
beir"1  neither  good  nor  evil  in  itself,  has  no  evils  nor  falsities  of 
its  own  to  answer  for.  But  of  the  innumerable  multitude  of 
persons  who  compose  the  race,  some  —  let  us  for  convenience' 
sake  say  the  half — unaffectedly  conceive  themselves  to  be 
good  men,  while  the  remainder  quite  as  unaffectedly  agree  in 
pronouncing  themselves  evil  men.  And  as  good  and  evil,  like 
light  and  darkness,  do  not  cohere  in  themselves  or  directly,  but 
only  in  some  third  or  neutral  quantity,  these  two  kinds  of  men, 
so  distinctly  antagonized  by  their  own  consciousness,  inevitably  go 
asunder  in  divine  things,  and  by  their  reciprocal  contrariety  pro- 
duce that  bipolar  aspect  of  the  spiritual  world  which  Sweden- 
borg characterizes  under  the  familiar  names  of  heaven  and  hell : 
the  only  difference  between  his  notion  of  the  subject  and  that 
which  is  popularly  entertained  being,  that  with  Swedenborg  it  is 
those  alone  who  feel  themselves  to  be  good  men  that  constitute 
hell,  and  those  only  who  feel  themselves  to  be  evil  men  that 
constitute  heaven. 

While  this  discordant  state  of  things  endures  in  the  spiritual 
world,  or  the  higher  regions  of  the  mind,  there  can  obviously 
be  no  unitary  consciousness  of  the  race  on  earth,  or  nothing  but 
an  enforced  harmony  in  the  lower  degrees  of  the  mind ;  nation 
being  divided  against  nation,  family  against  family,  and  man 

*  See  Arcana  Celestia,  1676, 1813, 2034,  2222, 2227,  2819, 6371  -  6373, 6720,  8273, 
etc. 


60  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

against  man.  That  is  to  say,  whilst  our  consciences  are  so  un- 
enlightened in  divine  things  as  to  pronounce  one  man  or  one 
class  of  men  absolutely,  and  not  alone  relatively,  good,  and 
another  man  or  another  class  of  men  absolutely,  and  not  alone 
relatively,  evil,  it  is  evident  that  human  society,  fellowship,  or 
equality  (which  alone  gives  unity  to  the  race,  or  endows  it  with 
permanent  self-consciousness)  cannot  come  about;  and  man's 
life  consequently  must  remain  utterly  chaotic  or  unredeemed, 
save  in  so  far  as  certain  providential  instrumentalities,  certain 
great  social  lieutenancies,  arise  to  institute  a  quasi  or  provisional 
order  in  human  affairs. 

Let  me  be .  perfectly  understood.  What  I  say  is,  that  all 
society  or  fellowship  among  men  is  simply  impossible  or  unen- 
durable, so  long  as  one  man  or  one  class  of  men  is  held  to  be 
absolutely  void  of  evil,  and  another  man  or  another  class  of  men 
absolutely  void  of  good.  For  in  that  case  the  former  must 
appear  personally  or  in  himself  acceptable  to  God,  and  the  latter 
must  appear  personally  or  in  himself  hateful  to  God,  so  that  a 
religious  obligation  would  constrain  the  good  man  to  exclude  the 
evil  man  from  his  society  or  fellowship  in  every  possible  way. 
If  the  evil  man  is  personally  revolting  to  God,  how  shall  I  dare 
to  offend  God  by  extending  my  personal  countenance  or  sym- 
pathy to  him  ?  Nothing  surely  can  be  plainer  than  this.  Very 
well  then,  transfer  your  view  for  a  moment  to  the  spiritual 
world,  as  made  up  of  the  contrasted  spheres  of  heaven  and  hell. 
Do  you  not  see  at  once  that  if  this  contrast  be  absolute — i.  e.  if 
heaven  and  hell  reflect  an  actual  divine  decree,  and  not  the  mere 
unfettered  play  of  human  freedom  —  the  mind  of  man  in  nature, 
depending  as  it  does  for  its  heat  and  light  upon  the  inflow  of 
spiritual  good  and  truth,  must  necessarily  repugn  the  social  con- 
ception of  human  destiny ;  must  necessarily  revolt  from  it  in 
fact,  as  from  the  grandest  conceivable  profanation  of  the  divine 
name  ?  It  is  the  pretension  of  human  society  to  take  up  the 
good  and  evil  alike  in  its  bosom,  and  shower  its  sunshine  and  its 
rain  equally  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust.  If  then  the  spiritual 
world  be  established  upon  the  absolute  bipolarity  of  good  and 
evil,  that  is  to  say,  if  the  angel  and  the  devil  exhibit  the  same 
actual  contrast  to  the  divine  regard  that  they  do  to  ours,  nothing 
can  be  more  odious  to  the  divine  mind,  nothing  more  contrary 


THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBOKG.  61 

to  his  providence,  than  a  state  of  things  upon  earth  which  puts 
forth  the  pretension,  as  society  unquestionably  does,  practically 
to  efface  all  distinction  of  good  and  evil  among  men,  by  lifting 
all  men,  saint  and  sinner,  just  and  unjust,  alike  into  the  bosom 
of  its  own  regenerate  unity. 

Practically  how  stands  the  case  then  ?  What  light  does 
Swedenborg  shed  upon  the  constitution  of  the  spiritual  world  ? 
Does  he  affirm,  so  far  as  it  was  open  to  him  to  observe  and 
ascertain,  any  absolute  difference  between  heaven  and  hell,  be- 
tween angel  and  devil  ?  That  is  to  say,  did  he  discover  that 
the  angel  claimed  any  personal  superiority  to  the  devil  in  the 
divine  regard,  any  superiority  in  himself?  Or  did  he  discover 
that  the  difference  between  them  was  purely  relative,  being  alto- 
gether contingent  upon  the  disproportionate  attitude  they  bore 
with  respect  to  the  truth  of  human  brotherhood,  fellowship,  or 
equality  ? 

Unquestionably  the  latter  verdict  is  the  one  invariably  rendered 
by  Swedenborg.  After  a  quarter  of  a  century's  unbroken  inter- 
course with  angel  and  devil,  he  declares  that  in  themselves  or 
absolutely  they  are  both  alike  ;  that  so  far  as  their  proprium  or 
selfhood  is  concerned,  there  is  nothing  to  choose  between  them. 
Those  who  are  familiar  with  Swedenborg' s  books  will  need  no 
testimonies  from  them  to  this  effect,  since  such  testimonies 
abound  to  their  knowledge  on  every  page.  But  I  may  properly 
cite  a  few  of  his  innumerable  dicta  upon  the  subject,  which  may 
prove  interesting  perhaps,  and  even  inspiring,  to  readers  of  a 
philosophic  turn  who  have  not  had  the  same  advantage. 

I  quote  first  of  all  a  pregnant  statement  of  general  princi- 
ples in  regard  to  personality,  which  may  fitly  introduce  the  other 
extracts. 

"  In  heaven  no  thought  is  given  to  persons,  nor  to  the  things 
of  person,  but  to  things  abstracted  from  person.  Hence  the 
angels  have  no  recognition  of  a  man  from  his  name  or  other  per- 
sonal attributes,  but  only  from  his  distinctive  human  faculty  or 
quality.  The  thought  of  persons  limits  the  angelic  idea,  or 
finites  it ;  while  that  of  things  does  not  limit  it,  but  gives  it  in- 
finitude. No  person  named  in  the  word  is  recognized  in  heaven, 
but  only  the  human  quality  or  substance  symbolized  by  that  per- 
son ;  neither  any  nation  or  people,  but  only  the  human  quality 


62  THE   SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

of  such  nation  and  people.  Thus  there  is  not  a  single  fact  of 
scripture  concerning  person,  nation,  or  people  which  is  known 
in  heaven,  where  the  angels  are  totally  unconcerned  about  the 
personality  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  and  see  no  difference 
between  Jew  and  Gentile,  but  difference  of  human  quality. 
The  angelic  idea,  refusing  in  this  manner  to  be  determined 
to  persons,  makes  the  speech  of  the  angels  as  compared  with 
ours  unlimited  and  universal."  * 

"  Every  man,  regenerate  though  he  be,  is  such  that,  unless 
the  Lord  withheld  him  from  evils  and  falses,  he  would  cast  him- 
self headlong  into  hell."  f 

"  Every  one  now-a-days  supposes  that  evils  and  falsities  in  man 
are  dispersed  and  abolished  while  he  is  regenerating,  so  that 
when  he  becomes  regenerate  nothing  of  evil  and  falsity  remains, 
but  he  is  clean  and  righteous  like  one  cleansed  and  washed  with 
water.  This,  however,  is  utterly  untrue.  For  no  single  evil  or 
falsity  in  man  can  be  so  broken  up  as  to  be  abolished,  but  on 
the  contrary  whatever  evil  belongs  by  inheritance  to  a  person 
or  has  been  actually  contracted  by  him  persists ;  so  that  every 
man,  even  the  regenerate,  is  in  himself  nothing  but  evil  and 
falsity,  as  livingly  appears  after  death.  This  truth  flows  from 
the  fact  that  all  the  good  and  truth  in  man  are  the  Lord  in  him, 
and  all  his  evil  and  falsity  are  himself;  so  that  every  man,  spirit, 
and  angel,  if  left  in  the  least  to  themselves,  would  plunge  spon- 
taneously into  hell.  This  is  why  in  scripture  the  heavens  are 

*  Arcana  Celestia,  5225,  8343,  9007. 

t  Arcana  Celestia,  789.  It  must  be  remembered,  in  connection  with  these  state- 
ments of  Swedenborg,  that  he  always  represents  delight  to  be  the  essence  of  hell 
as  of  heaven  also  ;  only  the  delights  of  one  are  opposed  to  the  delights  of  the  other. 
Thus  as  heaven  with  Swedenborg  means  a  mental  state  in  which  the  love  of  God 
and  the  love  of  the  neighbor  rule,  and  the  loves  of  self  and  the  world  obey,  so  hell 
means  a  mental  .state  in  which  this  hierarchy  is  inverted,  the  lower  loves  govern- 
ing, and  the  higher  ones  serving.  Its  delights  accordingly  are  so  intimate  and 
exquisite  as  being  bound  up  with  the  subject's  self,  that  he  with  difficulty  credits 
their  infernal  character  and  derivation,  and  inclines  in  fact  to  regard  them  as  truly 
celestial.  Swedenborg,  in  his  profoundly  interesting  book  on  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence, says  that  he  had  been  "  let  in  to  the  delights  of  the  selfish  love  of  rule,"  and 
he  found  it  "  to  exceed  all  the  delights  in  the  world."  It  was  "  a  delight  of  the 
whole  mind  from  its  inmost  to  its  ultimate  substances,  but  it  was  only  felt  in  the 
body  as  a  certain  pleasurable  and  gladsome  inflation  of  the  breast.  I  perceived 
that  from  this  supreme  delight,  as  from  their  fountain,  flow  all  evil  delights,  such 
as  adultery,  fraud,  revenge,  blasphemy,  etc."  Divine  Providence,  215. 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  63 

called  impure.  The  angels  confess  this  truth,  and  no  one  who 
does  not  do  so  can  relish  their  society.  It  is  God's  mercy  alone 
which  frees  them  from  evil,  yea,  which  draws  them  and  keeps 
them  out  of  hell,  to  which  they  have  a  headlong  inclination."  * 

"  There  is  no  moral  or  intellectual  rectitude  which  is  to  be 
ascribed  to  the  angel  himself,  but  only  to  the  lord  in  him. 
The  most  celestial  angel  is  in  himself  altogether  false  and  evil, 
what  is  good  and  true  in  him  being  not  really  but  only  apparent- 
ly his  own."  f 

"  All  good  and  truth  is  of  the  lord,  and  what  is  his  remains 
his  in  those  who  receive  it ;  for  it  is  divine,  and  refuses  to  be 
the  private  property  of  any  man.  He  consequently  who  appro- 
priates the  divine  to  himself"  —  i.  e.  takes  any  merit  to  himself 
for  his  moral  or  personal  excellency  —  "  really  defiles  and  pro- 
fanes it."  J 

"  It  has  been  demonstrated  to  me  by  lively  experience,  that 
every  man,  spirit,  and  angel,  viewed  in  himself  or  as  to  what  is 
peculiarly  Ms  own  in  him,  is  the  vilest  excrement,  and  that  if  he 
were  left  to  himself  he  would  breathe  only  hatreds,  revenges, 
cruelties,  and  foulest  adulteries.  These  things  are  his  proprium 
or  distinctive  selfhood.  This  is  evident  to  reflection  from  the 
fact  that  man  in  his  native  state  is  viler  than  all  beasts ;  and 
when  he  grows  up  and  becomes  his  own  master,  unless  external 
bonds  which  are  of  the  law,  and  the  bonds  he  instinctively  as- 
sumes in  order  to  grow  greatest  and  richest,  prevented  him,  he 
would  rush  into  every  iniquity,  nor  ever  rest  until  he  had  sub- 
jugated everybody  else  to  himself,  and  possessed  himself  of  their 
substance,  showing  no  favor  to  any  but  those  who  should  become 
his  abject  slaves. §  Such  is  the  nature  of  every  man,  however 
ignorant  he  be  of  the  fact  in  consequence  of  his  want  of  power 
to  act  himself  out ;  but  give  him  the  power,  and  release  him 
from  the  obligations  of  prudence,  and  his  inclination  would  not 
belie  his  opportunity.  The  beasts  are  not  so  bad  as  this,  for 

*  Arcana  Celcstia,  868. 

t  Arcana  Celestia,  633. 

\  Apocalypse  Revealed,  758.  These  facts  shed  light  upon  another  statement  of 
Swedenborg,  to  the  effect  that  "  there  is  no  enforced  or  arbitrary  authority  in  heav- 
en ;  since  no  angel  in  his  heart  acknowledges  any  one  superior  to  himself  but  the  lord 
alone."  Apocalypse  Explained,  735. 

§  One  would  say  that  Swedenborg  had  had  a  glimpse  of  the  second  French  Em- 
pire. 


64  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBOEG. 

they  are  born  into  a  certain  order  of  nature.  Those  that  are 
fierce  and  rapacious  do  indeed  inflict  injury,  but  only  from  self- 
preservation,  devouring  others  to  appease  hunger,  and  ceasing 
from  violence  when  this  want  is  satisfied." ' 

These  citations  amply  suffice  to  show  that  Swedenborg  de- 
tected no  manner  of  difference,  so  far  as  their  selfhood  or  per- 
sonality was  concerned,  between  angel  and  devil,  but  on  the 
contrary  an  absolute  identity.  That  is  to  say,  he  discovered 
nothing  in  the  angel  which  was  the  least  degree  meritorious 
towards  God,  and  nothing  in  the  devil  which  constituted  the 
slightest  ground  of  ill  desert  towards  him.  In  short,  he  found 
the  utmost  actual  difference  between  the  two  ;  but  this  difference 
was  no  way  subjective  as  reflecting  any  personal  merit  upon  the 
one,  or  any  personal  demerit  upon  the  other,  but  purely  objec- 
tive as  reflecting  a  difference  of  relation  in  them  to  something 
not  themselves. 

XI. 

No  doubt  the  statements  we  have  just  been  canvassing  may 
be  said  to  be  untrue  ;  which  is  an  easy,  but  by  no  means  a  rea- 
sonable, way  to  dispose  of  them.  I  myself  see  very  clearly  that 
they  labor  under  the  disadvantage  which  attaches  to  all  spiritual 
or  highest  truth,  namely,  that  it  appears  true  only  to  those  who 
wish  it  to  be  true,  that  it  has  only  an  intrinsic  probability  to 
back  it,  being  destitute  of  all  extrinsic  likelihood,  of  all  outward 
form  and  comeliness.  But  I  am  sure  that  to  those  who  are  pre- 
pared by  previous  culture  to  receive  Swedenborg's  statements 
on  their  own  evidence  —  and  the  number  of  these  I  conceive  can- 
not be  small  —  they  cannot  help  possessing  a  profound  philosophic 
significance.  For  they  go  clearly  to  establish  this  fact,  that  the 
insufficiency  of  the  moral  hypothesis  to  account  for  existence  — 
the  hypothesis  of  our  personal  independence  or  absoluteness, 
as  maintained,  for  example,  by  Fichte  —  is  a  fundamental  pos- 
tulate of  angelic  wisdom.  And  this  is  something  quite  new  to 
philosophy,  which  has  always  had  its  hands  so  absurdly  full  of 
doubt  and  denial  in  regard  to  physical  realities,  as  to  permit 
it  neither  time  nor  inclination  to  harbor  the  slightest  suspicion  in 

*  Arcana  Celestia,  987. 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  65 

regard  to  the  reality  of  the  moral  world.  If  then  it  is  only  our 
physical  experience  that  we  can  reckon  upon  as  stahle,  while 
our  moral  or  subjective  consciousness  is  the  true  realm  of  illu- 
sion, forever  mocking  us  with  hopes  that  mislead  and  betray, 
philosophy  has  still  a  capital  chance  to  get  upon  its  legs,  by  sim- 
ply adjusting  itself  for  the  first  time  in  history,  no  longer  to  the 
specious  appearance  of  things,  but  to  their  absolute  reality.  If 
it  be  true,  as  Swedenborg  reports,  and  I  for  one  have  no  mis- 
giving upon  the  subject,  that  all  celestial  and  all  spiritual  intel- 
ligences, in  proportion  as  they  are  wise,  agree  in  renouncing 
the  moral  hypothesis  of  creation,  or  in  holding  the  creator  to  be 
influenced  in  his  work  by  no  subjective  or  personal  aims,  but  by 
ends  purely  objective  and  impersonal,  I  do  not  see  how  philos- 
ophy can  fail  on  the  instant  to  perceive  an  incomparable  enlarge- 
ment of  her  borders,  literally  such  an  aggrandizement  of  her 
horizon  as  her  annals  have  never  yet  recorded.  For  her  only 
stumbling-block  from  the  beginning  has  been  the  subjective 
datum  in  consciousness,  or  our  imbecile  conceit  of  our  own  abso- 
luteness. And  here,  at  last,  comes  Swedenborg  with  an  induc- 
tion for  the  first  time  adequate  to  the  facts,  being  as  broad  as 
human  nature  itself — i.  e.  as  high  as  heaven  and  profound  as 
hell  —  which  shows  us  that  there  is  in  truth  nothing  so  little 
absolute,  so  largely  fallacious,  as  our  moral  or  subjective  con- 
sciousness ;  that  is  to  say,  nothing  so  intensely  dependent,  so 
subtly  contingent,  so  exquisitely  and  essentially  relative  to  some 
thing  else.  So  that  if  philosophy  would  only  consent  to  look 
at  these  astonishing  books,  she  would  no  longer  feel  any  need  to 
spend  money  for  that  which  is  not  bread,  and  her  labor  for  that 
which  satisfieth  not. 

What,  then,  is  this  grand  "  something  else"  which  is  of  such 
poignant  interest  to  philosophy,  as  reducing  all  our  subjective  pomp 
and  clamor  to  "  an  idiot's  tale,  full  of  sound  and  fury,  signifying 
nothing  "  ;  as  abasing,  indeed,  what  we  have  always  deemed  the 
majestic  finalities  of  heaven  and  hell  —  the  finished  and  sov- 
ereign personalities  of  angel  and  devil  —  to  its  own  sheer  and 
exclusive  constitutional  ministry  ? 

It  is  the  interest  of  REVELATION.  The  grand  controlling  in- 
terest which  all  things,  whether  in  heaven,  on  earth,  or  in  hell, 
obey,  is  the  necessity  of  an  adequate  revelation  of  the  divine 


66  THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

name.  Spiritual  existence  —  the  existence  of  spiritual  affection 
and  thought  —  is  indispensably  conditioned,  according  to  Swe- 
denborg,  upon  a  plenary  revelation  of  the  creative  name  in  the 
created  nature.  Why  ?  For  the  simple  reason  that  the  crea- 
ture can  claim  no  intuitive  or  a  priori  knowledge  of  the  creator, 
and  must  come  to  know  him  therefore  only  as  he  is  reflected  in 
himself.  He  can  know  his  creator  a  posteriori  only,  i.  e.  only 
through  an  actual  experience  of  the  creative  presence  and  power, 
as  revealed  in  the  created  nature.  In  a  word,  the  created  con- 
sciousness, the  self-consciousness  of  the  creature,  is  of  itself  and 
of  necessity  the  sole  measure  and  mirror  of  the  creative  perfec- 
tion. 

I  am  not  going  to  argue  the  matter  here  set  down,  the  alleged 
necessity  of  a  divine  revelation.  I  should  be  very  loath  to  influ- 
ence any  one,  even  in  what  seems  to  me  a  good  direction,  against 
the  impulses  of  his  own  heart ;  and  those  who  are  already  dis- 
posed by  independent  or  original  culture  to  an  affirmative  view 
of  this  question  will  dispense  with  persuasion.  But  I  neverthe- 
less greatly  desire  to  put  the  question  in  its  true  light  before  the 
reader,  and  I  will,  therefore,  briefly  restate  it  in  the  form  it 
takes  to  my  own  intelligence. 

In  the  first  place  let  me  say  what  is  meant  by  revelation.  The 
term  is  frequently,  and  indeed  commonly,  used  as  if  it  were  sy- 
nonymous with  information,  whereas  it  claims  an  utterly  distinct 
and  very  much  profounder  meaning.  To  inform  me  of  anything 
is  to  give  me  knowledge  which  is  essentially  level  to  the  human 
faculties,  or  belongs  legitimately  to  the  realm  of  science  ;  while 
revealed  knowledge,  properly  so  called,  is  knowledge  which  is 
essentially  veiled  or  hidden  from  men's  intelligence,  and  so  trans- 
cends the  legitimate  grasp  of  science.  Thus  to  reveal  is  to 
unveil  what  has  been  hitherto  concealed  under  a  veil  of  con- 
trary appearances.  The  revelator,  properly  so  called,  is  not  a 
scientific  genius,  like  Kepler,  who  sagaciously  detects  and  ex- 
poses the  hitherto  unsuspected  scope  of  natural  law.  He  is 
rather,  like  Christ,  a  man  of  no  scientific  culture  whatever, 
who  yet,  by  force  of  his  active  humanitary  sympathy  and  in- 
sight, livingly  discerns  and  reproduces  in  himself  the  unknown 
spirit  which  animates  all  nature  and  history,  but  is  persistently 
denied,  dishonored,  and  crucified  by  their  remorseless,  insensate 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  67 

letter.  Swedenborg  gives  me  a  great  deal  of  information  about 
spiritual  things  which  I  am  very  glad  to  get ;  and  I  accordingly 
feel  the  same  qualified  esteem,  in  kind  if  not  in  degree,  for  him, 
that  I  do  for  Humboldt,  or  Fourier,  or  any  other  veracious  man 
of  science,  whose  labors,  in  any  sphere  of  the  mind,  go  to  pro- 
mote the  race's  progress.  But  he  reveals  absolutely  nothing  to 
me.  That  is  to  say,  he  sheds  no  new  and  living  light  upon  the 
secret  things  of  the  divine  providence,  which  have  been  hitherto 
obscured  by  the  facts  of  nature  and  the  events  of  history.  On 
the  contrary,  his  life  was  that  of  our  average  manhood,  and  the 
secrets  he  divulges  in  relation  to  the  spiritual  world,  were  not 
things  inwardly  discerned  by  him,  but  outwardly  communicated 
to  him  by  others  ;  they  were,  as  he  himself  describes  them, 
strictly  audita  et  visa,  the  fruit  exclusively  of  ocular  and  auric- 
ular experience  amongst  angels  and  spirits.  He  never  pretends 
for  a  moment  to  bring  mankind  a  new  revelation,  being  alto- 
gether content  to  subside  into  the  humble  servant  of  the  chris- 
tian  verity ;  and  if  he  had  been  a  man  of  that  stamp,  we  should 
doubtless  have  found  his  so-called  "  revelations  "  plainly  attribut- 
ing themselves  to  the  same  limbo  of  vanity  which  has  spawned 
so  much  of  the  flatulent  literature  of  our  modern  spirit-rap- 
ping. 

Revelation  then  does  not  mean  simple  information,  as  it  is 
corruptly  used  to  do  ;  nor  does  it  ask  the  least  leave  of  the  sci- 
entific intellect,  since  it  is  concerned  with  truths  which  are 
utterly  beyond  the  original  compass  of  the  intellect  to  divine, 
however  perfectly  it  may  come  afterwards  to  reflect  them.  Rev- 
elation discloses  the  existence  in  man  of  a  higher  than  the  moral 
or  voluntary  life,  a  life  which  has  indeed  always  been  symbol- 
ized by  that,  but  which  puts  itself  at  a  hopeless  remove  from 
it  by  rigidly  disclaiming  a  finite  genesis,  and  appealing  only  to 
infinite  sanctions.  Now  science  is  the  organ  of  the  distinctively 
finite  intellect,  the  intellect  tethered  to  sense ;  and  though  doubt- 
less it  will  one  day  yield  a  prompt  reverberation,  a  cordial  floor- 
ing and  support,  to  the  instincts  of  this  higher  life,  the  two  spheres 
are  nevertheless  as  essentially  distinct  as  those  of  freedom  and 
bondage. 

It  is  plain  now  what  revelation  does  not  mean,  and  incident- 
ally to  that  of  course  what  it  does  mean.  And  having  ascer- 


68  THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

tained  thus  much,  let  us  next  proceed  to  inquire  how  it  is  that 
revelation  justifies  itself,  or  is  able  to  avouch  its  own  supreme 
necessity. 

Revelation,  according  to  Swedenborg,  is  essential  to  a  true  or 
living  acknowledgment  of  God,  in  contradistinction  to  a  mere 
doctrinal  or  traditional  acknowledgment.  An  unrevealed  God 
is  practically  no  God  at  all  to  the  human  understanding,  but  is 
and  must  remain  forever  incognizable  to  every  intelligence  be- 
neath his  own;  for  a  direct  or  immediate  contact  with  the  infi- 
nite would  be  obviously  fatal  to  the  finite  understanding,  and 
the  only  alternative  of  such  contact  is  the  mediate  or  indirect 
one  which  revelation  affords.  A  direct  or  immediate  knowledge 
of  God  on  our  part  would  imply  that  there  was  some  common 
bond  between  him  and  us,  something  continuous  from  him  to 
us  and  from  us  to  him,  some  point  of  identity  or  indistinction 
which  may  livingly  fuse  the  two,  just  as  the  marble  fuses  sculp- 
tor and  statue  in  its  own  embrace,  or  the  mother  fuses  father 
and  child  in  her  own  quickened  bosom.  But  the  hypothesis  of 
creation  stringently  excludes  all  such  community  or  identity. 
That  hypothesis  makes  the  creator  all  and  the  creature  nothing 
save  by  him  ;  so  that  the  very  faculty  of  knowledge  by  which 
the  latter  seeks  to  know  the  former,  is  his  only  in  appearance, 
while  in  reality  it  is  the  creator's  power  in  him.  Creation  is,  to 
be  sure,  an  exact  equation  of  the  creative  and  created  natures, 
but  an  equation  in  which  one  factor  is  wholly  active  and  the 
other  wholly  passive,  or  in  which  one  really  is  while  the  other 
only  appears.  To  talk  of  the  creature  truly  knowing  the  crea- 
tor under  these  circumstances,  is  to  talk  arrant  nonsense.  The 
statue,  wrought  by  the  sculptor  out  of  the  reluctant  marble,  is 
infinitely  nearer  to  a  just  appreciation  of  the  character  of  the 
sculptor,  in  the  entire  compass  of  his  civil,  religious,  and  domes- 
tic being.  For  the  statue  is  a  material  existence  at  least,  and 
has  thus  one  point  of  identity  with  the  sculptor,  which  makes 
it  infinitely  nearer  to  the  latter  than  the  latter  himself  is  to  God. 
There  is  absolutely  no  such  neutral  point,  or  point  of  indiffer- 
ence, between  creator  and  creature,  for  the  very  nature  or 
subjective  identity  of  the  latter,  which  to  his  own  consciousness 
disjoins  him  absolutely  from  the  creator,  is,  after  all,  only  a  per- 
petual permission  of  the  creative  love  in  the  interest  of  his  sub- 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  69 

sequent  spiritual  possibilities.  The  creator,  no  doubt,  sinks  or 
merges  his  infinitude  in  our  finite  lineaments ;  but  as  he,  on  his 
part,  does  not  thereby  cease  to  be,  so  we,  on  ours,  do  not  there- 
by begin  to  be,  but  only  to  exist  or  appear  to  our  own  con- 
sciousness. In  other  words,  God  so  vivifies  by  his  own  substance 
our  native  destitution  of  being,  as  that  we  thenceforward  seem 
to  live  of  ourselves,  or,  as  we  say,  naturally ;  appear  to  ourselves 
absolutely  to  be,  while  he  as  absolutely  disappears.  But  both 
the  appearance  and  the  disappearance  are  utterly  fallacious,  if 
we  push  them  beyond  their  proper  limits ;  that  is,  if  they  are 
not  seen  to  be  valid  only  within  the  compass  of  our  finite  con- 
sciousness, or  to  the  extent  of  our  sensuous  understanding :  the 
eternal  truth  of  the  case  being  all  the  while  that  God  alone 
really  is,  in  spite  of  his  disappearance  to  sight,  and  that  we 
ourselves  really  are  not,  in  spite  of  our  profuse  semblance  of 
being. 

Or  let  me  demonstrate  the  impossibility  of  a  direct  knowledge 
of  God,  from  the  necessary  limitations  of  knowledge  itself.  We 
cannot  know  God  immediately  or  independently  of  revelation, 
because  the  very  nature  of  our  knowledge  forbids  it. 

Knowledge,  properly  speaking,  is  what  relates  us  to  outlying 
things — things  that  are  external  to  ourselves.  It  always  implies 
a  basis  of  sensible  experience.  It  is  true  that  we  often  say  that 
we  know  things  when  we  do  not  really  know  them,  i.  e.  as  based 
upon  sensible  evidence,  but  only  remember  them,  as  based  upon 
rational  evidence,  i.  e.  as  having  learned  them.  Thus  we  say 
that  we  know  two  and  two  to  be  equal  to  four,  or  the  sum  of 
the  angles  of  a  triangle  to  be  equal  to  two  right  angles.  But 
we  know  no  such  thing,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word  knowl- 
edge. It  is,  in  fact,  only  a  compact  way  of  saying  that  we  have 
been  rationally  convinced  of  such  equality,  or  have  learned  it 
before  now.  Equality  is  a  term  of  relation  between  two  or 
more  things,  and  relationships  are  cognizable  only  to  the  reason, 
never  to  sense.  In  this  way  we  perpetually  confound  facts 
of  memory  which  pertain  to  the  rational  or  reflective  under- 
standing with  facts  of  sense,  which  pertain  to  our  bodily  expe- 
rience ;  but  the  two  spheres  are  nevertheless  perfectly  distinct. 
We  know  only  what  our  senses  in  some  form  or  other  avouch,  that 
is,  facts  of  finite  existence.  We  believe  only  what  our  reason  or 


70  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

reflection  in  some  form  avouches,  namely :  that  an  infinite  be- 
ing relates  all  these  existences  in  unity.  In  short,  sense  is 
the  invariable  ground  of  knowledge;  reason,  of  belief;  and  the 
two  things  should  never  be  confounded  in  serious  discourse. 

If  then,  in  this  state  of  things,  we  should  maintain  that  a 
direct  knowledge  of  God  is  possible  to  us,  a  knowledge  irrespec- 
tive of  any  revelation,  the  inference  would  be  that  God  is  an 
external  being  to  us,  that  he  is  related  to  us  by  our  senses,  and 
hence  is  inferior  to  us  ;  for  whatsoever  lies  outside  of  the  mind 
is  below  the  mind,  or  inferior  to  it.  But  this  is  the  hoarse  and 
sottish  croak  of  superstition.  No  such  God  exists.  In  the  first 
place,  there  is  nothing  absolutely,  but  only  phenomenally,  external 
to  the  mind  (or  spiritual  universe)  ;  all  that  sensibly  exists  being 
but  the  mind's  furniture,  or  existing  only  to  proclaim  and  illus- 
trate its  spiritual  unity.*  The  sensuous  or  uncultivated  mind 
does  indeed  affirm  the  absolute  as  well  as  the  relative  objectivity 
of  the  things  of  sense  ;  that  is,  it  tacitly  concedes  to  the  tree 
and  the  horse  a  virtual  independence  or  immortality,  in  allowing 
them  to  exist  out  of  relation,  not  only  to  the  individual  con- 
sciousness (the  vir),  which  is  right,  but  also  to  the  universal 
consciousness  (the  Tiomo),  which  is  silly.  But  the  spiritual  or 
regenerate  thought  of  man  rectifies  this  shallow  dogmatism,  and 
makes  all  sensible  existence  to  fall  within  the  unitary  mind  of 
the  race,  makes  it  in  truth  to  be  simply  constitutive  of  the  mind 
to  its  own  recognition;  and  consequently  if  everything  that 
sensibly  exists  does  so  only  in  relation  to  the  mind  of  the  race, 
or  falls  under  the  human  consciousness  and  not  above  it,  why 
then  of  course,  we  can  bring  God  into  external  or  sensible  con- 

*  "  Out  of  the  ground  the  lord  God  formed  every  beast  of  the  field,  and  every 
fowl  of  the  air,  and  brought  them  unto  the  man  to  see  what  he  would  call  them  ;  and 
whatsoever  the  man  called  it,  that  was  the  name  thereof.  And  the  man  gave  name  to  all 
cattle,  and  to  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and  to  every  beast  of  the  field.  —  Gen.  ii.  19,  20. 

Surely  no  one  can  for  a  moment  seriously  suppose  this  to  be  the  record  of  a  lit- 
eral historic  event ;  every  sober  judgment,  on  the  contrary,  must  regard  it  as  an 
expressive  symbol  of  the  great  creative  truth,  that  man  (spiritually  regarded)  is 
the  measure  of  existence,  that  is,  that  all  things  in  nature  derive  their  specific 
form  and  significance  from  the  relation  of  use  they  bear  to  the  human  mind. 
Name,  in  the  science  of  correspondences,  means  quality  •  and  by  "  man  giving 
name  "  to  all  existence  is  signified  therefore,  that  all  the  lower  forms  of  nature, 
mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  owe  their  specific  genius  or  worth  to  the  relation 
of  nearness  they  sustain  to  the  human  type  of  character. 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  71 

tact  with  our  intelligence  only  at  the  cost  of  transmuting  the 
absolutely  creative  relation  he  bears  to  the  mind,  into  a  phenom- 
enally constitutive  relation ;  that  is,  at  the  cost  of  degrading  him 
from  the  throne  of  his  infinitude  into  an  abject  article,  neither 
more  nor  less,  of  the  race's  mental  furniture. 


XII. 

I  will  assume,  accordingly,  without  further  parley,  that  a  true 
or  living  knowledge  of  God  is  inevitably  conditioned  upon  an 
authentic  revelation  of  his  name.  The  next  question  in  order 
is,  what  is  the  method  of  this  revelation  ?  How  does  it  actually 
come  about  ?  It  must  obviously  do  so  in  the  most  gradual  man- 
ner, since  its  full  accomplishment  is  contingent  upon  the  advent 
of  a  true  society  or  brotherhood  among  men  upon  the  earth : 
the  evolution  of  such  society  or  brotherhood,  again,  being  itself 
contingent  upon  a  previous  experience  and  exhaustion  of  the 
patriarchal,  the  municipal,  and  tfye  national  or  political  admin- 
istration of  human  affairs.  The  truth  of  an  absolute  society, 
fellowship,  equality  among  men,  as  the  consummation  of  our 
earthly  destiny,  is  indeed  the  hidden  divine  leaven  which  has 
been  fermenting  in  all  history,  and  even  from  its  rudest  begin- 
nings moulding  the  mind  of  man  into  inevitable  conformity  with 
itself.  But  from  the  nature  of  the  case  its  operation,  during  all 
these  initiatory  stages  of  progress,  must  be  purely  negative. 
For  until  society  puts  on  positive  form  —  that  is,  until  the  truth 
of  man's  rightful  fellowship  or  equality  with  man  becomes  scien- 
tifically demonstrated  —  the  two  elements  which  go  to  constitute 
the  social  conception  of  human  life  are  arrayed  in  inveterate 
hostility  to  each  other.  In  all  the  rudimentary  social  forms,  the 
family,  the  city,  the  nation,  an  utter  enmity  exists  between  the 
generic  and  the  specific  element  in  consciousness,  between  the 
universal  and  the  particular  interests  of  man.  A  most  pro- 
nounced contrariety  between  the  homo  and  the  vir,  between  the 
masculine  and  the  feminine  force  in  history,  between  the  physical 
and  the  moral  life  of  man,  is  everywhere  accepted  and  carefully 
organized  in  institutions,  as  the  true  law  of  human  destiny ;  and 
the  order  thence  ensuing  does  not  hesitate  to  claim  for  its  sup- 
port every  guaranty  of  the  most  shameless  force.  At  this  rate, 


72  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

of  course,  society,  which,  spiritually  or  truly  regarded,  means 
the  complete  reconciliation  of  these  jarring  elements,  is  restricted 
to  a  purely  negative  exhibition,  or  makes  itself  felt,  not  as  a  friend, 
but  rather  as  an  enemy  to  the  established  order. 

Understand  me.  When  I  represent  society  as  a  disturbing 
force  in  past  history,  as  a  perpetual  menace  to  the  existing  civil- 
ization, I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  family,  the  city,  the  na- 
tion, are  not  in  themselves  very  admirable  institutions,  eminently 
conducive  to  progress.  I  only  mean  to  say  that  they  are  sure 
to  become  perverted  in  their  practical  administration  to  private 
ends,  and  that  they  hence  provoke  the  just  resentment  of  upright 
minds,  of  men  in  whose  bosom  the  social  sentiment  has  begun 
to  be  quickened.  All  of  these  institutions  are  so  many  nurse- 
ries of  the  social  destiny  of  man  ;  so  many  divinely  appointed 
menstrua  for  the  purification  of  the  social  sentiment  in  the  breast 
of  the  race.  They  are  a  purely  educational  device  of  the  divine 
providence  by  which  the  brute  intelligence  of  the  race  becomes 
quickened  to  discern  its  inherent  selfishness  and  incapacity,  and 
to  aspire  after  humaner  and  wiser  methods.  But  they  have 
only  this  strictly  ministerial  efficacy,  and  they  accordingly  be- 
come instruments  of  the  most  unhallowed  tyranny  whenever 
they  are  administered  in  their  own  interest,  or  without  regard 
to  this  exquisite  subordination.  At  such  times  all  that  is  divine 
in  man  rises  in  revolt,  and  unless  wiser  counsels  speedily  pre- 
vail, revolt  grows  into  revolution,  and  the  existing  bonds  of  in- 
tercourse among  men  become  violently  ruptured. 

But  now  by  what  recognized  organ  shall  the  social  sentiment 
announce  itself?  Is  any  heart  of  man  equal  to  the  conception 
of  a  universal  righteousness  upon  the  earth,  while  as  yet  the 
earth  is  covered  with  fraud  and  violence  ?  Is  any  intellect  of 
man  able  to  give  adequate  voice  to  the  inspirations  of  such  a 
righteousness  ? 

Absolutely  none.  No  man  is  either  good  enough  or  wise 
enough  to  forecast  human  destiny,  until  that  destiny  shall  have 
at  least  negatively  avouched  itself  to  human  hope  by  the  historic 
desecration  of  privilege  among  men,  or  the  gradual  destruction 
of  every  institution,  however  conventionally  sacred,  which 
organizes  human  inequality.  The  bare  conception  of  a  right- 
eousness truly  divine  upon  the  earth  is  rendered  impossible, 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBOEG.  73 

while  the  rightful  inequality  of  man  with  man  is  enforced  by 
institutions  which  still  challenge  human  respect.  The  only 
thing  that  veils  or  obscures  the  divine  name  to  men's  eyes  is 
the  absence  of  any  such  living  society  or  brotherhood  of  men 
as  would  justify  them  in  ascribing  human  life  to  an  infinitely 
wise  and  good  and  powerful  source :  in  other  words,  is  the  pres- 
ence of  all  those  institutions  which  seek  to  guarantee  order  by 
force  instead  of  freedom.  And  the  only  thing  consequently 
which  in  this  state  of  affairs  can  at  all  reveal  or  unveil  the  divine 
name  to  men's  recognition  is  some  purely  representative  bond, 
some  merely  professional  brotherhood  or  fellowship  among  men, 
some  strictly  formal  or  conventional  society,  which  may  have  no 
particle  of  substantive  virtue,  but  is  yet  full  of  the  richest  pro- 
phetic worth,  as  symbolizing  that  perfected  work  of  God  in  our 
nature,  which  unites  us  with  him  down  to  our  flesh  and  bones, 
or  gives  us  resurrection  from  death  even  this  side  of  the  grave. 

This  representative  economy  is  called  THE  CHURCH.  The 
church,  as  a  visible  or  ritual  institution,  limits  itself,  according 
to  Swedenborg,  to  this  purely  representative  sanctity.  Spiritu- 
ally viewed,  the  church  —  what  Swedenborg  calls,  accordingly, 
the  new  or  final  church,  God's  accomplished  work  in  human 
nature — implies,  of  course,  a  deeper  sanctity;  for  it  means 
that  LIVING  society,  fellowship,  brotherhood  of  men  which  shall 
perfectly  reconcile  or  fuse  in  its  own  sovereign  unity  all  the 
existing  contrarieties  of  human  temperament  and  character,  and 
so  cover  the  earth  with  the  glory  of  God  as  the  waters  cover 
the  sea.  The  ritual  church  has  never  had  the  least  just  pre- 
tension to  constitute  this  grand  and  living  reality,  but  only  to 
reflect  or  represent  it  to  man's  dawning  spiritual  intelligence. 
And  it  has  done  this  only  by  blindly,  no  doubt,  but  still  unflinch- 
ingly upholding  the  literal  divinity  of  Christ  against  all  gain- 
sayers,  or  persistently  unmooring  the  hope  of  men  from  their 
own  pygmy  personalities,  in  order  to  anchor  it  afresh  upon  a 
great  work  of  righteousness  once  for  all  achieved  by  absolute 
divine  might  in  the  very  heart  of  their  nature.  I  certainly 
set  no  value  upon  the  technical  "  church  "  at  this  day  in  its 
ritual  capacity.  It  has  long  since  fulfilled  all  its  legitimate  uses 
in  that  line.  It  seems  to  me  now,  on  the  contrary,  very  much 
in  arrears,  spiritually,  of  its  former  competitor,  "  the  world." 


74  THE  SECKET   OF   SWEDENBOEG. 

In  fact,  it  very  plainly  cumbers  the  ground  which  it  has  grown 
impotent  any  longer  to  fertilize,  so  that  the  only  use,  divine  or 
human,  it  now  seems  to  enact,  is  that  of  alienating  men's  cordial 
respect  and  sympathy  from  the  entire  ecclesiastical  scheme  of 
thought.  But  when  I  look  back  to  what  the  church  lias  done 
for  mankind  by  its  blind  unreasoning  and  yet  sagacious  adher- 
ence to  the  letter  of  the  truth — when  I  think  how,  above  all,  it 
has  kept  alive  in  the  earth  the  tradition  of  an  original  divine 
innocence  in  our  nature,  which  will  one  day  .spiritually  repro- 
duce itself  in  every  most  abject  finger  and  toe  of  our  regenerate 
social  and  aesthetic  consciousness,  or  obliterate  in  its  infinite  em- 
brace every  filthy  and  pitiful  remainder  of  our  moral  right- 
eousness —  I  know  no  bounds  to  my  grateful  respect  and  rev- 
erence for  it.  I  feel  indeed  that  all  the  vices  which  have  attend- 
ed its  actual  administration  have  been  richly  compensated  by 
that  prodigious  service. 

Revelation  then,  regarded  as  a  full  and  impartial  voucher  of 
the  divine  name,  is  restricted  to  the  same  negative  law  of  growth 
or  evolution  which  society  itself  obeys,  since  it  is  identical  with 
the  very  personality  of  society.  So  long,  accordingly,  as  society 
itself  is  immature,  so  long  as  it  is  narrowed  down  by  our  native 
ignorance,  conceit,  and  unbelief  to  a  purely  negative  manifesta- 
tion, so  long  of  necessity  must  revelation  reflect  its  adverse  for 
tunes,  and  content  itself  with  the  merely  negative  exhibition  it 
gets  in  the  distinctively  ecclesiastical  life  of  the  world,  or  at  the 
hands  of  the  established  church. 

This  theory  of  the  church  as  a  strictly  representative  econo- 
my —  as  limited  to  conferring  no  real,  but  only  a  typical  right- 
eousness upon  its  subjects  —  is  enforced  and  illustrated  by  every 
incident  that  Swedenborg  relates  of  his  intercourse  with  angels 
and  spirits.  That  intercourse  appears  indeed  to  have  surcharged 
him  with  curious  and  recondite  information  in  regard  to  the 
states  of  the  church  before  authentic  history  began  ;  but  as 
usual,  he  makes  no  attempt  to  systematize  his  knowledge ;  prob- 
ably because  he  himself  lived  too  near  the  era  of  the  "last 
judgment "  to  be  able  to  catch  the  key-note  of  the  grand  intel- 
lectual system  to  which  all  its  developments  are  subservient.* 

*  His  angelic  acquaintances  labored  under  an  equal  disability.  Whenever  he 
asked  a  judgment  from  them  in  regard  to  the  intellectual  prospects  of  the  race, 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  75 

He  thus  learned,  for  example,  that  all  those  long-lived  genera- 
tions mentioned  in  Genesis,  which  used  to  pique  our  juvenile 
admiration,  from  Adam  to  Seth,  and  Seth  to  Noah,  and  Noah  to 
Eber,  were  not  generations  of  persons  by  any  means,  as  appears 
in  the  letter  of  the  record,  but  only  of  churches  which,  in  long 
succession,  diversified  the  pre-historic  annals  of  the  race,  and 
gradually  hardened  from  the  most  fluid  and  infantile  states  of 
charity  and  faith  into  the  rigidly  fossil,  or  most  unloving,  unbe- 
lieving, and  idolatrous  thing,  which  the  post-historic  annals  of 
the  race  prove  the  church  to  have  been  from  the  time  of  Abram 
to  that  of  Christ.  He  gives  us  many  beautiful,  and,  in  a  philo- 
sophic point  of  view,  very  interesting,  glimpses  of  those  early 
churches,  and  of  the  unaffected  modesty,  simplicity,  and  truth 
which  characterized  their  tender  genius.  But  I  have  no  time, 
nor  indeed  inclination,  to  dwell  upon  these  faint  crepuscular 
gleams  of  the  church  in  man.  They  are  obviously  one  and  all 
without  any  historic  or  scientific  value  (being  thus  only  indi- 
rectly available  to  philosophy),  because  they  one  and  all  had  no 
root  in  a  redeemed  nature  of  man,  but  only  in  certain  specific 
differences  of  culture  and  character  among  men  ;  hence  no  out- 
ward body  corresponding  to  their  inward  soul ;  and  they  conse- 
quently lapsed  into  lower  and  ever  lower  states  of  natural 
innocence  and  integrity,  until  at  last  all  savor  of  both  was  lost 
in  that  gigantic  form  of  fraud  and  violence  known  as  the  Jewish 
church. 

I  am  well  aware  that  nothing  can  be  more  opposed  to  the 
loose  thought  of  the  time,  whether  religious  or  secular,  than  the 
entire  drift  of  Swedenborg's  teaching  in  regard  to  the  nature 
and  office  of  the  church ;  but  I  have  neither  the  presumption  nor 
the  inclination  to  offer  myself  as  his  apologist  before  the  world. 

they  professed  a  complete  ignorance,  saying  that  all  they  knew  was,  that  there 
would  be  a  great  increase  of  free  thought  in  the  church,  inasmuch  as  the  man  of 
the  church  would  thenceforth  be  spiritually  free,  the  old  bondage  of  the  letter  being 
now  broken  up.  See  "  Last  Judgment,"  73,  74.  In  his  "  True  Christian  Religion," 
123,  he  says  :  "  The  reduction  of  all  things  to  order  in  heaven  and  hell "  —  that  is, 
in  the  spiritual  world  —  "  is  still  an  incomplete  process,  consequent  upon  the  last 
judgment";  but  he  hoped  to  shed  some  light  upon  it  when  it  was  completed. 
He  calls  "  this  process  peculiarly  that  of  redemption  "  ;  but  he  died  the  year  after 
this  book  was  published,  if  I  remember  aright.  At  all  events,  he  was  not  destined 
to  do  us  this  great  service ;  one,  moreover,  for  which,  I  cannot  help  thinking,  the 
singularly  simplistic  character  of  his  intellect  did  not  specifically  qualify  him. 


76  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

His  statements,  I  doubt  not,  will  sufficiently  vindicate  themselves 
in  the  long  run  to  all  minds  seriously  interested  to  understand 
them ;  my  sole  concern  with  them  meanwhile  being  to  show- 
how  they  justify  themselves  to  my  particular  intelligence.  He 
makes,  indeed,  very  startling  assertions.  Over  and  over  again, 
for  example,  he  declares  the  church  as  a  literal  or  ritual  economy 
effete  as  to  every  divine  and  human  use  which  once  sanctified 
it ;  *  and  announces  in  lieu  of  it  a  new  and  living  church,  built 
upon  the  altogether  illiterate,  unwritten,  or  internal  scope  of 
revelation,  that  is  to  say,  upon  the  unfettered  spiritual  instincts 
of  the  race,  which  will  enjoy  all  manner  of  spiritual  peace  or 
internal  blessedness  of  life,  because  it  will  be  instinct  with  true 
faith  and  true  charity ;  and  which  accordingly  opens  wide  its 
arms  of  welcome  and  shelter  to  the  whole  religious  world,  what- 
ever be  its  petty  dogmatic  distinctions. 

Statements  like  these  are  doubtless  very  revolting  to  preju- 
dice, but  while  none  but  a  fool  would  believe  them  on  Sweden- 
borg's  authority  (as  none  but  a  fool  would  reject  them  for  lack 
of  any  superior  authorization),  it  must  yet  be  admitted  that 
myriads  throughout  Christendom  have  a  dawning  conviction  of 
the  same  truth  in  their  own  minds,  however  little  they  may  be 
able  intellectually  to  reconcile  that  truth  with  the  advance  of 
man's  spiritual  destiny.  Multitudes  of  people  perceive  the 
church  —  as  a  visible  institution  distinct  from  the  state  —  to  be 
a  mere  spectre  in  the  earth,  moping,  and  moaning,  and  wringing 
wan  ineffectual  hands  over  the  places  it  once  inhabited,  but  now 
only  infests.  It  may  not  always  be  as  frankly  avowed,  but  a  host 
of  honest  minds  feel  the  same  conviction  I  myself  have  long  felt, 
which  is,  that  the  religious  life  of  man,  claiming  to  have  inter- 
ests and  aims  essentially  opposed  or  unreconciled  to  those  of  his 

*  It  must  not  be  imagined  for  a  moment  that  Swedenborg  is  so  base-minded  as 
to  include  the  personnel  of  the  church  in  these  denunciations.  This  would  degrade 
him  to  the  level  of  Joe  Smith  at  once,  and  relieve  all  intelligent  men  of  a  desire 
to  hear  any  further  from  him.  On  the  contrary,  he  looks  at  the  church  purely  in 
the  light  of  an  intellectual  system,  and  has  not  the  least  apparent  conception  that 
it  prejudices  any  man's  spiritual  prospects,  save  in  those  rare  instances  where  its 
dogmas  have  been  intellectually  confirmed  by  pertinacious  sophistical  reasoning. 
See  "  Apocalypse  Explained,"  233,  250,  and  "  Apocalypse  Kevealed,"  426,  where  he 
shows  the  judgment  upon  the  church  to  have  respect  to  its  dogmatic,  not  to  its 
personal  constitution.  I  will  throw  some  quotations  from  Swedenborg  bearing 
upon  the  general  subject  of  the  church  into  the  Appendix.  See  note  B. 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  77 

secular  life,  has  become  at  length  a  rank  though  unconscious 
imposture ;  that  it  amounts,  in  fact,  to  the  same"  ghastly  and 
grinning  caricature  of  reality  which  the  corpse  exhibits  to  the 
living  man,  or  which  the  secular  life,  as  opposed  to  the  religious, 
always  modestly  admits  itself  to  be.  And  such  persons  doubtless 
would  gladly  have  their  feeling  become  knowledge,  their  faith  be- 
come sight;  a  result,  as  I  conceive,  wholly  impossible,  unless 
we  come  to  take  essentially  the  same  view  of  the  nature  and  office 
of  the  church  that  Swedenborg  does,  and  deny  it  the  least  real, 
while  allowing  it  the  utmost  representative,  significance  in  re- 
gard to  spiritual  things. 

This  then  is  the  important  question,  Does  the  church  properly 
claim  a  positive,  or  a  merely  negative  office  ?  What  has  been  its 
historic  mission,  to  nourish,  or  only  to  purify  ?  Is  the  church 
the  really  constructive  institution  it  is  vulgarly  reputed  to  be, 
capable  of  stamping  one  man  or  one  class  of  men  good  before 
God,  and  another  man  or  another  class  evil  ?  Or  is  it  the  rigid- 
ly detergent  institution  which  Swedenborg  proclaims  it  to  be, 
utterly  incapable  of  originating,  much  more  of  confirming,  any 
personal  differences  among  men,  because  its  total  providential 
purpose  is  to  efface  all  existing  inequalities  in  human  character, 
and  shut  up  all  men  alike,  good  and  evil,  virtuous  and  vicious, 
wise  and  simple,  learned  and  ignorant,  religious  and  scientific, 
devout  and  sceptical,  great  and  small,  rich  and  poor,  white  and 
black,  to  the  hope  of  God's  sheer,  unlimited,  undistinguishing 
mercy,  to  be  yet  fully  revealed  in  the  social  regeneration  of  the 
race? 

Let  us  state  the  question  in  still  another  shape. 

The  vulgar  notion  of  the  church  in  its  purest,  most  orthodox, 
and  therefore  most  vigorous  or  malignant  form,  is  that  it  is  a 
divine  assessor  in  the  earth,  appointed  to  take  stock  of  the  ex- 
isting inequalities  in  human  character,  in  order  to  build  up  an 
eternal  heaven  out  of  one  kind  of  men,  and  an  eternal  hell  out 
of  another  kind.  Or  we  may  say  that  it  is  a  divine  tariff  im-' 
posed  upon  all  earthly  products  intended  for  the  skies ;  this 
tariff  running  so  high,  in  certain  cases,  as  to  be  altogether  pro- 
hibitory, and  actually  consigning  the  excluded  articles  conse- 
quently to  destruction. 

Obviously  this   conception   of  the   church   involves   a    fatal 


78  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

reproach  to  the  divine  name,  inasmuch  as  it  shows  him  dealing 
with  his  creatures  no  longer  in  an  infinite  and  absolute,  but  in  a 
finite  and  contingent  manner ;  or  exhibits  him  as  superfluously 
good  to  some  of  them,  and  as  superfluously  evil  to  others. 

Swedenborg's  conception  of  the  church  runs  completely  coun- 
ter to  this  prevalent  notion,  whether  we  regard  it  in  its  more 
orthodox  and  insolent,  or  its  more  sentimental  and  mendicant 
modes  of  manifestation. 

His  idea  of  the  church  is,  that  it  is  at  most  a  divine  witness 
in  the  earth,  holding  out  indeed  to  men's  reverent  attention  a 
form  of  spiritual  truth  which  will  one  day  fall  away  and  dis- 
close the  infinite  divine  substance  so  long  imprisoned  within  it, 
but  which  is  totally  incapable,  under  any  amount  of  culture,  of 
itself  fructifying  into  that  substance.  The  church  witnesses  to 
God's  creative  presence  in  humanity,  but  of  course  does  not 
constitute  it,  as  it  sometimes  insolently  pretends  to  do ;  and  heav- 
en and  hell  are  respectively  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  pos- 
itive and  negative  sanctions  which  the  human  conscience  freely 
accords  to  the  truth  of  the  church's  testimony.  They  have 
neither  of  them  the  least  particle  of  relevancy  whatever  to  the 
presumption  of  any  absolute  difference  in  men's  character  and 
standing  before  God ;  for,  as  Swedenborg  proves,  angel  and 
devil  are  perfectly  identical  in  themselves,  and  differ  exclusively 
in  the  lord.  Their  contrarious  existence  consequently  furnishes 
no  conceivable  augury  of  human  destiny,  but  confesses  itself  a 
result,  pure  and  simple,  of  the  church's  imbecile  administration 
in  divine  things,  that  is,  of  its  persistent  inability  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  divine  existence  and  character,  without  violating,  in 
some  sort,  every  instinct  of  man's  freedom  and  rationality. 
Swedenborg  shows,  accordingly,  throughout  all  his  books,  from 
their  beginning  to  their  close,  that  God  has  no  joy  in  the  angel, 
nor  any  grief  in  the  devil,  save  as  they  stand  favorably  or  unfavor- 
ably related  to  the  prosperity  of  the  church,  i.  e.  tend  to  enforce 
or  enfeeble  the  witness  which  it  bears  at  once  to  the  universality 
and  the  particularity  of  his  presence  and  providence  throughout 
the  earth.  The  lord's  love,  as  Swedenborg  invariably  reports 
it,  is  a  universal  love,  being  the  salvation  of  the  whole  human 
race ;  and  no  form  of  his  church,  therefore,  can  satisfy  his  re- 
gard, which  is  not  practically  identical  with  the  interests  of  hu- 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  79 

man  society  ;  that  is,  ivJiich  does  not  in  itself  structurally  repro- 
duce and  avouch  the  intimate  and  indissoluble  fellowship,  equality, 
brotherhood  of  universal  man. 

As  the  former  conception  of  the  church  reflected  a  manifest 
opprobrium  upon  the  divine  name,  by  changing  his  relation  to 
us  from  an  absolute  to  a  contingent  one,  from  a  spiritual  or  purely 
inward  to  a  personal  or  purely  outward  relation,  so  this  latter 
conception  reverses  that  reproach,  or  implies  the  highest  exalta- 
tion of  the  divine  name,  by  universalizing  his  relation  to  us,  or 
showing  that  under  whatever  infirmities  of  administration  his 
name  is  really  one  and  infinite,  and  utterly  disavows,  therefore, 
the  imputation  of  duplicity  and  finiteness  which  the  enforced 
antagonism  of  heaven  and  hell  sheds  upon  it. 

Let  us  then  try  briefly  to  settle  this  question  in  the  light  of 
the  principles  we  have  already  discussed. 


XIII. 

It  has  been  abundantly  demonstrated,  in  the  earlier  portions 
of  this  essay,  that  our  natural  selfhood,  or  subjective  identity, 
is  a  pure  exigency  of  the  divine  love  and  wisdom  towards  us, 
in  the  interest  exclusively  of  our  spiritual  or  objective  individu- 
ality. 

There  is  nothing  obscure  in  this  proposition  to  any  one  who 
has  read  what  precedes.  It  simply  implies  that  our  life  is  two- 
fold, that  is,  both  natural  and  spiritual,  conscious  and  uncon- 
scious, subjective  and  objective  ;  and  then  it  alleges  that  the 
former  of  these  elements  is  de  jure  if  not  de  facto  subservient 
to  the  latter.  It  is  as  if  I  should  say  that  no  child  exists  with- 
out the  conjoint  parentage  of  father  and  mother,  and  that  in 
every  such  existence  the  part  of  the  mother  subordinates  that 
of  the  father.  Or,  that  every  statue  is  the  product  of  an  ideal 
force  and  a  material  reaction  to  such  force ;  the  former  element 
in  its  production  being  primary,  the  latter  secondary.  Or,  that 
a  watch  is  a  unit  of  two  forces  —  one  functional  or  dynamic, 
denoting  its  ability  to  keep  time  ;  the  other  passive  or  static,  de- 
noting its  mechanical  organization :  and  that  this  latter  compo- 
nent of  its  existence  is  wholly  subservient  to  the  former.  In 
all  these  cases  the  maternal  force  announces  itself  as  giving  ex- 


80  THE   SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

istence  to  things,  or  phenomenally  identifying  them ;  and  the 
paternal  force  as  giving  them  being,  or  absolutely  individualizing 
them. 

These  illustrations  show  what  my  proposition  means  to  allege 
with  respect  to  man.  It  implicitly  alleges  that  man  is  a  unit  of 
two  forces  —  one  material,  which  finites  or  gives  him  conscious 
identity,  and  which  we  call  nature  ;  the  other  spiritual,  which 
infinites  him  or  gives  him  unconscious  individuality,  and  which 
we  call  God :  and  that  the  former  of  these  forces  is  in  right,  if 
not  in  fact,  altogether  secondary  and  ministerial  to  the  latter. 

Now  such  being  the  truth  of  things,  the  reader  will  agree  with 
me,  that  nothing  could  more  effectually  tarnish  the  face  of  crea- 
tion, or  embarrass  its  practical  working,  than  to  find  the  creature 
taking  a  different  view  of  creative  order  from  that  of  the  crea- 
tor. If  to  the  creative  mind  the  natural  interests  of  the  creature 
are  altogether  secondary  and  subordinate  to  his  spiritual  inter- 
ests, while  to  the  understanding  of  the  creature  himself  they 
are  altogether  primary  and  commanding,  it  is  inevitable  that 
creation  must  so  far  wear  a  disorderly  aspect,  or  argue  a  conflict 
between  its  constitutional  factors.  It  is  evident,  in  fact,  that 
creation  will  never  attain  to  its  sabbath  or  rest,  in  the  perfect 
union  of  its  infinite  and  finite  elements,  until  this  difference  be- 
tween them  becomes  practically  overcome. 

Now,  as  a  fact  both  of  his  own  experience  and  of  his  observa- 
tion of  others,  every  man  knows  that  this  conflicting  estimate 
of  natural  and  spiritual  things  actually  exists  between  creator 
and  creature.  Every  man  knows  that  he  is  instinctively  prone 
to  over-estimate  the  actual  and  under-estimate  the  real ;  to  in- 
dulge a  high  appreciation  of  natural  goods,  and  a  comparatively 
feeble  one  of  spiritual  goods.  And  he  regards  it  accordingly  as 
the  legitimate  aim  of  his  best  culture  to  reverse  this  unfortunate 
habit,  and  so  bring  himself  into  cordial  and  permanent  adjust- 
ment with  the  mind  of  God. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Every  cultivated  man  —  that  is  to  say,  every 
man  who  is  not  as  yet  hopelessly  besotted  either  by  the  excess 
or  the  deficiency  of  nature's  bounty  towards  him — perceives  this 
actual  adjustment  of  the  finite  with  the  infinite  mind  to  be  the 
total  secret  of  human  history ;  to  constitute  both  the  universal 
and  the  particular  scope  of  what  we  call  progress,  meaning  by 


THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBOEG.  81 

that,  man's  providential  destiny  upon  earth,  or  the  completed 
education  of  the  race.  No  one  is  so  dull  as  not  to  be  able  to 
recognize,  either  through  himself  or  others,  that  a  certain  puri- 
fying process  is  going  on  in  all  history,  public  and  private, 
whereby  both  the  race  and  the  individual  are  being  gradually 
disciplined  out  of  selfish  into  associated  ends,  and  out  of  ignorant 
into  enlightened  methods,  of  action.  Progress,  whether  public 
or  private,  seems  to  take  place  in  an  invariably  negative  way, 
that  is,  it  always  exacts  a  preliminary  experience  and  acknowl- 
edgment of  evil  and  error.  Our  vices  and  follies,  collective 
and  personal,  have  wrought  us  infinitely  more  advantage  than 
our  virtue  and  knowledge  have  ever  achieved.  Our  best  learn- 
ing has  come  to  us  in  the  way  of  unlearning  prejudice,  our  best 
wisdom  in  the  way  of  outgrowing  conceit,  our  best  action  in  the 
way  of  undoing  what  we  have  previously  done  of  evil  and  false. 
In  short,  while  the  indisputable  end  of  the  creative  providence  is 
to  endow  us  with  its  own  infinitude,  the  invariable  means  it  uses 
to  effect  this  end  is  to  saturate  and  nauseate  us  with  the  sense 
of  our  own  inveterate  finiteness.  So  palpably  true  is  all  this, 
that  the  fundamental  grace  of  the  religious  character  throughout 
history  is  humility ;  the  primary  evidence  of  a  spiritual  quick- 
ening in  the  soul,  repentance.  And  what  can  a  fact  of  this 
magnitude  mean,  if  notwithstanding  we  are  to  look  upon  the 
church  as  implying  God's  personal  complacency  towards  one  sort 
of  men,  and  his  personal  ill-will  towards  another  sort,  that  is, 
as  supplying  its  subject  with  a  positive  and  not  a  mere  negative 
method  of  access  to  God? 

Such  a  notion  of  the  church's  efficacy  would,  in  fact,  stultify- 
all  history.  For  she  has  been  the  incontestable  historic  repre- 
sentative and  protagonist  of  this  negative  divine  administration 
in  human  affairs.  Her  proper  function  in  the  earth  has  always 
been  to  exalt  men  spiritually  only  by  humbling  them  naturally, 
or  making  them  heartily  loathe  the  accidents  of  birth,  tempera- 
ment, and  genius,  which  give  them  an  adventitious  superiority 
to  other  men.  Undoubtedly  the  church  in  its  literal  form  has 
always  exhibited  a  more  or  less  gross  perversion  of  this  its  origi- 
nal spirit ;  that  is  to  say,  it  has  always  contrived  to  replace  the 
merely  carnal  or  natural  pride  of  the  human  heart,  which  it  was 
appointed  to  discipline,  by  an  infinitely  more  deadly  religious  or 

6 


82  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

spiritual  pride,  which  nothing  short  of  hell  can  discipline.  But 
some  faint  glimmer  of  spiritual  life  has  always  managed  to  keep 
itself  alive  underneath  the  church's  cumbrous  and  heathenish 
ritual ;  and  there  never  was  a  time  accordingly,  throughout 
its  history  —  until,  perhaps,  within  a  very  recent  period  —  when 
some  direct  heavenly  succor  was  not  available  through  it  to  sin- 
sick  and  weary  souls.  Even  under  its  Jewish  form  the  alto- 
gether purgative  and  sacrificial  tenor  of  its  ritual  constrained 
thoughtful  minds  to  see  that,  though  the  worshipper  was  brought 
outwardly  nigh  to  God  by  the  church,  it  was  only  with  a  view 
to  teach  him  by  that  unrighteous  privilege  his  real  or  inward 
remoteness,  and  so  dispose  him  to  that  personal  humility  or 
charity  towards  less  privileged  men,  upon  which  alone  all  spirit- 
ual divine  blessing  pivots. 

If  this  were  the  ever-latent  virtue  of  the  law,  surely  it  is  the 
ever-patent  virtue  of  the  gospel.  No  intelligent  reader  of  the 
New  Testament,  it  appears  to  me,  can  for  a  moment  doubt  that 
Christ  and  his  apostles  looked  upon  the  Jewish  church  as  exert- 
ing a  strictly  damnatory  —  never  a  justifying  —  power  over  all 
who  cultivated  its  prescriptive  righteousness.  Christianity  itself 
may  be  styled,  in  fact,  a  formal  proclamation  of  the  exhaustion 
of  religion  as  a  ceremonial,  and  its  revival  as  a  life.  It  imported 
the  cessation  of  ritual  or  sacrificial  worship  as  a  means  of  ac- 
cess to  God,  and  the  substitution  of  an  affectionate  or  heartfelt 
devotion  in  the  worshipper,  motived  altogether  upon  Grod"s  re- 
vealed clemency  to  the  unrighteous  and  the  evil.  The  cleansing 
which  the  Jew  derived  from  the  law  was  a  purely  carnal  one, 
inferring  no  manner  of  spiritual  nearness  to  God,  but  rather 
spiritual  distance  from  him,  inasmuch  as  one  whose  heart  cov- 
eted or  even  tolerated  a  ceremonial'  righteousness  could  not  be 
supposed  to  appreciate  a  living  or  real  one.  In  Christ  this  be- 
nighted ritualist  was  for  the  first  time  to  lose  his  inward  remote- 
ness from  the  source  of  life,  and  be  brought  spiritually  near; 
was  to  be  taught  to  renounce  his  literal  or  differential  righteous- 
ness, based  upon  his  assumed  superiority  in  the  divine  sight  to 
other  men,  and  to  cultivate  an  exclusively  spiritual  one,  based 
upon  his  cordial  fellowship  or  equality  with  all  mankind.  "  Be- 
hold the  days  come,  saith  the  lord,  that  I  will  make  a  new  cov- 
enant with  the  house  of  Israel,  and  with  the  house  of  Judah. 


THE  SECKET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  83 

This  is  the  covenant  I  will  make  with  the  house  of  Israel,  saith 
the  lord  :  I  will  put  my  law  in  their  inward  parts  and  write  it 
in  their  hearts,  and  I  will  be  their  God  and  they  shall  be  my 
people.  And  they  shall  teach  no  more  every  man  his  neighbor, 
saying,  Know  the  lord :  for  they  shall  all  know  me  from  the  least 
unto  the  greatest,  saith  the  lord  :  FOR  I  will  forgive  their  iniqui- 
ty, and  I  will  remember  their  sin  no  more."  *  "  Remember," 
says  the  apostle  to  the  Ephesians,  "that  ye  being  in  times 
past  gentiles  in  the  flesh,  who  are  called  uncircumcision  by 
that  which  is  called  the  circumcision  in  the  flesh  made  by 
hands,  at  that  time  were  without  Christ,  being  aliens  from 
the  commonwealth  of  Israel  and  strangers  from  the  covenants 
of  promise.  But  now  in  Christ  Jesus  ye  who  sometime  were 
far  off  are  made  nigh  by  his  blood.  For  he  is  our  peace  who 
hath  made  both  one  and  hath  broken  down  the  middle  wall  of 
partition  between  us,  having  abolished  in  his  flesh  the  [only 
ground  of]  ENMITY,  even  the  law  of  commandments  contained 
in  ordinances,  for  to  make  in  himself  of  twain  one  new  man, 
so  making  peace.  —  Through  him  we  both  have  access  by  one 
spirit  to  the  father."  So  again  the  same  apostle,  addressing  the 
Colossians,  says :  "  And  you,  being  dead  in  your  sins  and  the 
uncircumcision  of  your  flesh,  hath  God  quickened  together  with 
Christ,  having  forgiven  you  all  trespasses,  blotting  out  the  hand- 
writing of  ordinances  that  was  against  us,  which  was  contrary  to 
us,  and  took  it  out  of  the  way,  nailing  it  to  his  cross."  f 

Evidently  then  the  iniquity  in  the  church  against  which  Christ 
protested  and  rebelled  was  its  pretension  to  confer  upon  its  follow- 
ers a  strictly  legal  or  literal  and  personal  righteousness  —  such 
a  righteousness  as  implied  a  relation  of  merit  on  their  part 
towards  God,  and  a  relation  of  demerit  on  the  part  of  other 
people.  And  the  righteousness  he  set  before  it  was  a  purely 
spiritual  one,  or  such  a  one  as  consists  only  in  a  temper  of  the 
most  unreserved  fellowship  or  equality  with  all  men.  In  other 
words,  the  only  church  which  Christ  avouches  is  a  living  society, 
brotherhood,  or  fellowship  of  all  mankind,  which  will  disallow 
all  distinction  or  privilege  among  men  but  that  which  grows  out 
of  the  largeness  and  the  zeal  of  the  social  spirit  in  their  bosom ; 

*  Jeremiah  xxxi.  31,  33,  34  ;  Hebrews  viii.  8-12. 
t  Ephesians  ii.  11  -  18  ;  Colossians  ii.  13, 14. 


84  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

a  spirit  which  is  sure  to  abase  whatsoever  is  proud  or  lofty,  and  to 
exalt  whatever  is  lowly.  Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  for  a  brief 
while  the  literal  Christian  church  itself  appeared  roughly  to 
apprehend  the  spirit  of  its  founder,  and  was  intent  upon  bringing 
forth  the  best  fruits  it  knew.  For  we  read  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles,  that  ' '  all  who  believed  were  together  and  had  all 
things  common,  and  sold  their  possessions  and  goods,  and  parted 
them  to  all  as  every  one  had  need."  * 

Of  course  this  was  merely  an  effusion  in  the  sphere  of  senti- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  early  disciples,  and  as  such  entitled  to 
its  proper  consideration.  It  was  doubtless  of  great  advantage 
to  cherish  this  spirit  of  hearty  mutual  succor,  when  the  Christian 
church  was  barely  germinating  as  a  material  institution,  or  push- 
ing its  way  to  light  and  air  through  the  superincumbent  layers 
of  a  totally  inimical  society.  But  the  fact  was  without  any 
strict  philosophic  value  or  permanent  practical  significance.  For 
it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  brotherhood  of  the  church, 
or  Christian  fellowship,  is  not  based  upon  sentiment,  i.  e.  does  not 
admit  a  merely  voluntary  allegiance,  but,  on  the  contrary,  claims 
a  foundation  of  the  most  rigid  equity  or  justice,  and  hence  makes 
itself  obligatory  upon  men.  We  must  never  forget,  in  other 
words,  when  we  are  speaking  of  the  Christian  church,  according 
to  the  idea  of  its  founder,  or  as  a  spiritual  economy,  that  it  is 
a  strictly  universal  administration,  claiming  the  gentiles  for  its 
inheritance  and  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth  for  its  posses- 
sion. The  Old  Testament  prophecies  and  promises  are  replete 
with  testimonies  to  this  point.  In  Daniel's  vision,  for  example, 
we  read :  "  In  the  days  of  these  kings  shall  the  God  of  heaven 
set  up  a  kingdom  which  shall  never  be  destroyed  ;  and  the  king- 
dom shall  not  be  left  to  other  people,  but  it  shall  break  in  pieces 
and  consume  all  these  kingdoms,  and  it  shall  stand  forever." 
Again :  "  I  saw  in  the  night  visions,  and  behold  !  one  like  the 
son  of  man  came  with  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  came  to  the 
Ancient  of  Days  —  and  there  was  given  him  dominion  and  glory 
and  a  kingdom  that  all  people  and  nations  and  languages  should 
serve  him.  His  dominion  is  an  everlasting  dominion,  which  shall 
not  pass  away,  and  his  kingdom  that  which  shall  not  be  destroyed."  f 

*  Acts  ii.  44,  45. 

t  Daniel  ii.  44,  and  vii.  13,  14. 


THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  85 

But  there  is  no  need  to  recur  to  the  ancient  seers,  fascinating  and 
majestic  as  their  descriptions  of  the  great  redemptive  sabbath 
are.  Every  reader,  familiar  with  the  New  Testament,  knows 
that  Christianity  professes  to  be  a  universal  religion,  and  prom- 
ises to  supersede  or  spiritually  appropriate  to  itself  all  the  re- 
ligions of  the  earth ;  that  its  apostles  were  commissioned  to  go 
out  into  all  the  world  and  communicate  the  gospel  of  redemp- 
tion to  every  creature ;  and  that,  consequently,  if  we  diminish 
it  of  this  pretension  by  consenting  to  look  upon  the  church,  as 
it  has  hitherto  visibly  existed  at  any  time,  in  the  light  of  a 
fulfilment  of  Christ's  idea,  we  at  once  reduce  Christ  to  the 
level  of  a  Moses,  a  Buddha,  a  Zoroaster,  a  Mahomet,  and  leave 
him,  like  them,  stripped  of  all  exhaustive  divine  significance. 
And  if  the  Christian  church  have  this  inevitable  universality  of 
scope  —  if,  in  other  words,  the  society  or  brotherhood  which 
Christ  instituted  among  men  be  essentially  a  spiritual  society  or 
brotherhood  —  then  clearly  no  past,  no  present,  and  no  future 
exhibition  of  the  church,  in  carnal  or  ritual  form,  can  justly 
claim  to  be  anything  more  than  a  matrix  of  this  spiritual  result ; 
bearing  precisely  the  same  relation  to  it  that  the  shell  of  a  nut 
does  to  its  kernel,  or  the  husk  of  wheat  to  the  mature  grain, 
namely,  a  relation  of  the  strictest  protection  and  nutrition  dur- 
ing all  the  protracted  period  of  the  church's  spiritual  infancy, 
i.  e.  of  our  SOCIAL  immaturity,  and  falling  into  contempt  and 
oblivion  whenever  that  use  is  accomplished. 


XIV. 

"Very  well,"  I  now  think  I  hear  my  reader  exclaiming, 
"  I  am  ready  to  grant  you  that  the  primary  office  of  the  church 
has  been  to  purify  our  consciences,  by  abasing  the  natural  pride 
and  covetousness  in  us  which  are  so  apt  and  eager  to  claim 
divine  sanctions  ;  and  that  we  are  not  entitled,  consequently,  to 
regard  it  in  any  more  positive  light  than  as,  at  best,  a  revelation 
or  witness  of  God  in  the  earth.  But  now  tell  me,  I  pray -you, 
something  about  the  beginnings  of  this  revelation.  How  did  it 
get  itself  started  originally  ?  How,  in  other  words,  did  the  early 
church  —  the  church  in  literal  form  —  ever  contrive  to  impose 
itself  upon  the  popular  belief  as  an  authentic  divine  institution  ? 


86  THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

i 
It  is  very  evident,  for  example,  that  the  Mosaic  revelation,  if  it 

should  take  place  in  our  day,  would  provoke,  in  'spite  of  its  un- 
questionable grandeur  and  dignity  in  a  sensuous  or  picturesque 
point  of  view,  very  much  the  same  rational  obloquy  that  the 
sordid  mormon  imposture  does.  It  would  be  scouted,  in  fact, 
as  scientifically  absurd  by  the  greater  part  of  Christendom. 
What  makes  the  difference  between  then  and  now  ?  Is  revela- 
tion altogether  proportionate  to  the  understanding  addressed? 
Give  me  your  ideas  in  full  on  this  subject.  Do  you  conceive 
revelation  to  be  a  fixed,  or  only  a  contingent  quantity?  Do 
you  regard  it  as  absolute,  or  only  relative  to  the  human  facul- 
ties ?  Do  you  hold,  for  example,  that  the  Mosaic  revelation  was 
true  for  its  own  time  and  place,  but  untrue  for  our  day  ?  Did 
its  authority,  as  a  divine  revelation,  vest  exclusively  in  its  adap- 
tation to  the  very  narrow  hearts  and  minds  to  which  it  was  spe- 
cifically addressed?  And  does  it  challenge,  consequently,  no 
such  authority  to  our  present  regard  ?  In  short,  does  it  prop- 
erly disclaim  all  pretension  to  that  universality  and  perpetuity 
which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  we  are  entitled  to  demand  in  a  revela- 
tion from  God  ?  For  I  find  myself,  not  unwilling  indeed,  but 
simply  unable,  to  believe  in  any  so-called  revelation  of  the  divine 
name  which  is  destitute  of  these  two  characteristics  —  universality 
and  perpetuity  ;  which,  in  other  words,  does  not  embrace  within 
itself  all  space  and  all  time,  or  proclaim  itself  identical  with  na- 
ture and  history.  You  yourself  have  been,  virtually  at  least 
if  not  actually,  saying  all  along  that  no  sufficing  or  perma- 
nent revelation  is  conceivable  but  upon  these  conditions.  And 
what  I  want  now,  accordingly,  is  to  get  a  more  explicit  state- 
ment of  your  views,  that  I  may  learn  how  you  manage  to  be- 
lieve, as  firmly  as  you  do,  in  the  truth  of  revelation,  without 
perceiving  the  gross  affront  which  every  such  pretension  offers  to 
the  inviolate  progress  of  the  mind,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing, 
the  continuity  of  natural  and  historic  order." 

The  answer  to  all  this  doubt  is,  as  it  seems  to  me,  very  sim- 
ple and  salutary.  Briefly  stated  it  is  as  follows :  The  human 
mind,  or  natural  and  historic  order,  is  itself  only  a  process  of 
revelation  of  the  creative  name  ;  and  our  technical  "  revela- 
tions," consequently,  so  far  from  affronting  the  mind's  integrity, 
do  but  confirm  it ;  so  far  from  invalidating  nature  and  history, 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  87 

do  but  foreshadow  and  induct  their  sovereign  function  ;  do  but 
cradle  and  nurse,  so  to  speak,  their  own  highest  and  truest  yet 
most  unsuspected  significance.  But  this  statement  is  doubtless 
much  too  brief.  Let  me  enlarge  it. 

I  am  taught,  then,  by  Swedenborg's  disclosures,  not  only  to 
look  upon  nature  and  history  as  the  true  theatre  of  the  divine 
revelation,  but  also  to  regard  them  as  having  absolutely  no  other 
purpose  in  existence  than  to  serve  as  such  theatre.  That  is  to 
say,  they  did  not  originally  exist  as  finalities  or  on  their  own 
account,  and  then  become  accidentally  subjected  to  the  apoca- 
lyptic function  ;  but  their  sole  original  title  to  exist  derives  from 
their  exquisite  subserviency  to  that  function.  This,  in  my  opin- 
ion, constitutes  Swedenborg's  vast  intellectual  superiority  to  our 
ordinary  religious  and  scientific  soothsayers,  that  he  gives  us 
upon  this  subject  no  longer  guesswork,  but  the  fruit  of  positive 
insight.  All  our  diviners,  whether  devout  or  sceptical,  hold 
nature  and  history  to  a  final  or  absolute  and  independent  signifi- 
cance ;  and  thus  find  themselves  compelled  either  to  adjust  rev- 
elation to  cosmical  order  in  a  very  crude  irrational  way,  or  else 
with  my  questioner  to  reject  it  altogether.  Swedenborg,  on  the 
contrary,  denies  them  the  least  independent  worth,  the  slightest 
substantive  significance,  and  leaves  them  valid  only  as  furnish- 
ing a  basis  of  divine  knowledge  consonant  with  the  ever-grow- 
ing requirements  of  the  human  heart  and  understanding.  They 
furnish  a  needful  basis  to  the  church  in  human  nature,  and  have 
absolutely  no  spiritual  significance  apart  from  that  function.  The 
vulgar  prejudice,  on  the  other  hand,  both  religious  and  scientific, 
is  that  nature  is  an  objective  work  of  God,  consummated  off- 
hand before  recorded  history  began,  and  that  history  is  only  the 
subsequent  subjective  fermentation  to  which  this  work  was  liable  ; 
so  that  revelation,  if  it  be  admitted  at  all,  cannot  be  admitted  as 
an  inherent  function  of  nature  and  history,  but  only  as  a  super- 
natural achievement,  or  an  event  arbitrarily  induced  upon  natural 
and  historic  order. 

Swedenborg  has  not  the  least  intellectual  complicity  with  this 
prejudice.  He  denies  nature  to  begin  with  the  faintest  objectivity 
to  the  divine  mind,  or  affirms  it  to  be  a  purely  subjective  work  of 
God  in  the  interest  exclusively  of  man's  spiritual  evolution.  It  is, 
in  fact,  as  rigid  an  involution  of  the  spiritual  world  —  the  universe 


88  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

of  affection  and  thought — as  the  glove  is  an  involution  of  the  hand, 
whose  necessities  alone  call  for  its  existence.  And  a  fortiori, 
therefore,  he  denies  history  a  natural  origination,  or  turns  it  from 
a  garish  flowering  of  natural  principles  into  an  abject  seed-place  or 
seminary  of  spiritual  truth  and  goodness,  in  whose  necessities  alone 
both  it  and  nature  find  their  sole  and  equal  raison  d'etre.  Hold- 
ing these  views  of  the  essential  subserviency  both  of  nature  and 
history  to  the  spiritual  world,  or  the  evolution  of  a  life  divinely 
human,  of  course  the  question  of  a  literal  revelation  could  prove 
in  no  way  embarrassing  to  him,  but  finds  itself,  in  fact,  implicitly 
if  not  explicitly  solved  by  every  word  he  says.  For  while  he  thus 
turns  nature  and  history  into  an  utterly  servile  correspondence 
or  inverse  imagery  of  the  infinite  divine  substance  which  is  al- 
ways latent  —  in  order  that  it  may  one  day  become  patent  —  in 
the  finite  form  of  man,  he  at  the  same  time  transmutes  all  these 
literal  so-called  "  divine  revelations,"  which  up  to  Christ's  time 
had  diversified  the  annals  of  the  race,  into  so  many  partial 
glimpses  of  this  grand  universal  verity,  into  so  many  premature 
attempts  on  the  part  of  man  to  rifle  the  mystical  heart  of  nature, 
or  bring  himself,  by  violence  as  it  were,  into  accord  with  the 
great  underlying  but  still  unfathomable  secret  of  history. 

It  seems  to  me  that  an  incalculable  intellectual  advantage 
thus  accrues  to  Swedenborg  over  the  ordinary  religionist  and 
ordinary  rationalist  both,  in  respect  to  all  these  mooted  points  of 
the  church's  origin  and  history.  What  alone  makes,  and  has  ever 
made,  these  questions  insoluble  is,  the  pertinacity  with  which  we 
cling  to  the  notion  of  the  church  as  a  positive  divine  token  in 
the  earth,  and  not  a  mere  negative  one ;  as  a  nutritive  divine 
force  in  the  world,  and  not  a  purely  purgative  one.  If  then, 
with  Swedenborg.  we  consent  to  dismiss  this  irrational  concep- 
tion, and  come  to  regard  the  church  as  a  literal  divine  lieuten- 
ancy in  the  interests  of  the  broadest  human  society  or  brother- 
hood on  earth  and  in  heaven  —  and  bound,  therefore,  like  all 
lieutenancies,  to  disappear  when  the  true  incumbent  arrives  — 
we  see  at  a  glance  that  it  demands  no  other  foundation  than 
the  instincts  of  the  human  heart,  no  other  origination  than  it  is 
sure  to  find  in  the  free  play  of  men's  natural  temperament  and 
genius.  The  sole  purpose  of  the  church  has  been  to  purge  the 
earth  of  its  false  gods,  the  gods  authenticated  by  the  native 


THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG.  89 

arrogance  and  cupidity  of  the  human  heart,  by  the  native  igno- 
rance and  conceit  of  the  human  understanding  ;  and  it  carries  out 
this  purpose  of  course  only  by  first  giving  a  quasi  consecration 
to  these  low  instincts  of  our  nature,  and  then  gradually  bending 
and  shaping  them  to  higher  issues.  The  rudest  literal  or  sym- 
bolic form  of  the  institution  —  the  shape  in  which  the  church 
originally  challenges  recognition,  and  which  perfectly  adapts  it 
to  the  comprehension  even  of  sense  *  —  is  the  antagonism  of  a 
select  race  or  family  to  the  rest  of  mankind.  The  immemo- 
rial tradition  of  a  divine  seed  in  the  earth,  struggling  for  its  domin- 
ion with  the  seed  of  the  evil  one,  becomes  easily  appropriated  to 
themselves  by  persons  or  races  of  a  devout  temper,  of  a  fanatical 
genius  ;  and  once  appropriated,  it  is  bequeathed  of  course  as  a 
sacred  inheritance  to  their  offspring.  This  divine  seed  had  been 
for  a  long  time  previous  to  the  Christian  era  identified,  to  the 
Jewish  imagination,  with  Abraham,  the  founder  of  their  own 
nation,  and  with  the  literal  progeny  descended  from  his  loins. 
In  Christianity  this  aspect  of  the  church  underwent  a  sheer  and 
sudden  reversal,  the  jew  being  now  authoritatively  deposed 
from  the  divine  favor,  and  the  gentile  reinstated.  On  what 
ground  ?  Manifestly  that  the  jew,  though  distinguished  above 
the  gentile  by  the  carnal  possession  of  the  law,  had  yet  become 
by  that  very  possession  spiritually  disaffected  to  its  righteous- 
ness beyond  all  other  people,  and  was  hence  incapable  of  reap- 
ing its  promised  satisfactions  in  the  Christ. 

Accordingly,  from  this  period  onward  to  our  own  day,  the 
name  of  Christ  fills  the  historic  page,  and  the  church  founded 
by  his  apostles  assumes  to  itself  the  rightful  supremacy  of  the 
whole  earth.  What  estimate  does  Swedenborg  put  upon  these 

*  I  can  perfectly  understand  by  sensible  tuition  what  all  my  spiritual  culture 
disallows,  namely,  how  one  person  may  be  acceptable  to  God  and  another  abhor- 
rent. I  can  even  understand  by  that  medium,  and  without  any  difficulty,  how  the 
former  person  should  be  myself,  and  the  latter  person  a  man  of  another  race, 
family,  or  color.  For  sense  of  necessity  views  God  as  a  far  more  grandly  finite 
or  selfish  being  than  man ;  and  to  be  more  finite  and  selfish  than  man  is  to  be 
devilish ;  that  is,  to  love  or  hate  all  other  beings  without  any  reference  to  their 
objective  worth,  but  simply  with  reference  to  their  subjective  use  and  advantage  to 
one's  self.  No  wonder  that  religion,  with  such  an  incentive,  was  so  rife  in  early 
times.  No  wonder  that  every  family,  or  gens,  in  early  times,  boasted  its  special 
tutelary  divinity ;  and  that  the  entire  gentile  world  was  organized  upon  the  invet- 
erate mutual  hostility  of  all  religions,  instead  of  their  essential  unity. 


90  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

facts  ?  How  does  he  interpret  Christ's  personal  and  official  sig- 
nificance ?  In  what  light  does  he  exhibit  the  Christian  revela- 
tion —  as  a  final  or  perfect,  or  as  a  transient  and  imperfect,  man- 
ifestation of  the  divine  name  ? 

Altogether  in  the  former  and  higher  aspect.  Let  us  see  then, 
so  far  as  we  are  able,  on  what  grounds  of  reason  he  does  this. 
We  need  not  expect,  as  I  have  already  said,  to  find  him  justify- 
ing himself  in  a  strictly  ratiocinative  way,  or  as  men  deal  with 
what  they  feel  to  be  matter  of  opinion  merely,  but  affirmatively 
rather,  or  as  they  deal  with  what  they  feel  to  be  matter  of  pre- 
cise knowledge.  Nevertheless,  he  supports  his  affirmations  by 
incessant  reference  to  intellectual  considerations,  as  well  as  by 
illustrations  drawn  from  the  recognized  principles  of  common 
sense,  or  the  race's  rational  experience,  so  that  we  need  be  at 
no  loss  after  all  to  divine  the  true  grounds  of  his  induction. 


XV. 

We  have  seen  that  creation,  philosophically  viewed,  involves 
a  divided  movement  —  one  descending,  generic,  physical,  by 
which  the  creature  becomes  set  off,  projected,  alienated  from  the 
creator  in  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  form ;  the  other  as- 
cending, specific,  moral,  by  which  the  creature  thus  naturally 
pronounced  becomes  conscious  of  himself  as  separated  from  his 
creative  source,  and  instinctively  reacts  against  the  fact,  or  seeks 
to  reunite  himself  with  God.  Or,  we  may  say  that  the  former 
movement  restricts  itself  to  universalizing  the  creature,  by  giv- 
ing him  identity  or  community  with  all  other  things ;  while  the 
latter  aims  to  individualize  him,  by  investing  him  with  a  con- 
science of  selfhood  or  freedom  sensibly  distinct  from  all  other 
things.* 

*  Hence  it  is  that  religion  becomes  specially  addicted  to,  or  cognizant  of,  this 
latter  interest.  For  religion  —  from  re  and  ligo,  the  prefix  re  in  latin  verbs  hav- 
ing the  same  loosening  or  dissolving  force  as  the  prefix  un  in  English  verbs  — 
means  the  unbinding  of  those  who  are  in  bondage  to  nature,  in  bondage  to  natural 
evil  and  error,  and  giving  them  the  freedom  which  befits  the  children  of  God. 
No  doubt  the  subject  of  nature,  knowing  as  yet  no  higher  objectivity,  will  be 
very  sure  to  regard  the  bondage  he  is  thus  under  as  the  truest  freedom,  and  to 
look  upon  religion  accordingly  as  his  enemy.  But  the  culprit  is  notoriously  an 
unfair  judge  of  the  law;  and  whether  we  think  well  or  ill  of  it,  religion  itself, 
viewed  in  its  essence,  and  separated  from  all  ecclesiastical  alloy,  has  never  meant 
anything  but  the  enfranchisement  of  human  life  in  every  sphere  of  its  activity. 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  91 

But  this  is  by  no  means  all  that  we  have  seen.  We  have  seen 
besides,  that  the  generic  or  universalizing  force  in  creation  sen- 
sibly dominates  its  specific-or  individualizing  force;  and -this  is 
a  fact  of  transcendent  importance  in  its  spiritual  bearings,  or  its 
influence  upon  the  development  of  the  church.  For  it  distinctly 
proves  thus  much,  namely,  that  no  direct  effort  which  the  moral 
subject  makes  to  readjust  himself  to  his  creative  source  can 
ever  spiritually  avail  him,  or  boast  more  than  an  illusory  suc- 
cess ;  for  the  reason  that  his  will  is  so  contingent  upon  his 
instincts  —  his  moral  character  so  dependent  upon  his  physical 
temperament  —  that  his  voluntary  activity  will  always  go  to 
intensify  his  finite  ties  rather  than  abate  them,  to  enhance  his 
conscious  remoteness  from  the  infinite  rather  than  abridge  it. 
Let  us  glance,  for  example,  at  the  beginnings  of  the  religious 
life  in  man,  or  his  ambition  to  bring  himself  personally  near  to 
the  infinite.  I  feel  an  instinctive  reverence  for  the  divine  name 
which  disposes  me  to  placate  it,  or  render  it  personally  propi- 
tious to  me,  by  all  the  means  in  my  power.  But  if  I  push  this 
disposition  beyond  certain  definite  limits,  I  find  myself  gradually 
led  into  such  wilderness  states  —  states  of  frantic  self-isolation  — 
as  brings  erelong  my  inmost  but  hitherto  latent  selfishness  and 
indifference  to  my  kind  into  the  broad  gaze  of  consciousness, 
and  fills  me  accordingly  with  any  emotions  but  those  of  repose 
towards  God.  What  I  naturally  covet,  what  all  my  innocent 
instincts  crave,  is  the  greatest  possible  experience  of  outward 
good,  the  greatest  possible  immunity  from  outward  evil.  But 
the  moment  I  put  my  moral  or  personal  force  at  the  service  of 
these  instincts,  and  devoutly  aspire  to  realize  them,  their  inno- 
cence turns  to  shame  in  my  bosom,  and  I  become  conscious  — 
of  course  not  intelligently,  but  sensibly  conscious  —  of  a  growing 
inward  distance  from  God,  which  bids  fair  to  engulf  all  my  nas- 
cent personal  hopes  in  despair.  I  experience,  in  fact,  what  is 
properly  called  "  a  conscience  of  sin  "  ;  that  is  to  say,  I  under- 
go such  a  sickening,  disheartening  sense  of  my  utter  inward 
disproportion  to  the  infinite  goodness,  as  paralyzes  all  the  joy  I 
have  ever  had  in  its  remembrance.  Indeed,  so  lively  a  conviction 
besets  me,  not  merely  of  my  actual  or  chance  defilement,  but 
of  my  essential  and  habitual  corruption  as  illustrated  by  the  light 
of  God's  holiness,  that  I  feel  a  distrust  and  distaste  of  his  once 


92  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

lovely  name,  hardly  stopping  short  now  of  an  inmost  despair  and 
hatred.  Undoubtedly  I  cloak  these  disloyal  emotions  from  my 
own  acknowledgment,  and  even  from  my  own  suspicion.  So 
sedulous  indeed  is  my  zeal  in  that  behalf,  that  my  prayer  is  sure 
to  grow  ever  more  vociferous  as  the  lamp  of  my  hope  burns 
dim ;  and  as  my  real  or  inward  enmity  defines  itself,  the  out- 
ward voice  of  my  praise  and  adoration  puts  on  an  added  fervor 
and  frequency. 

I  need  not  say  to  any  one  who  has  ever  felt  a  decisive  creep 
of  its  horrors,  that  a  more  atrocious  anguish  than  that  here 
described  as  shut  up  in  the  religious  conscience,  wherever  that 
conscience  exists  in  its  purity,*  is  unknown  to  the  human  bosom  ; 
and  it  all  grows  out  of  the  fact  I  am  alleging,  namely,  the 
rigidly  conditional  nature  of  the  moral  consciousness,  or  the 
circumstance  of  its  dependence  for  all  its  inspiration  upon  the 
finite  organization.  Man,  as  we  have  seen,  is  essentially  a  social 
being  ;  that  is  to  say,  he  is  created  both  male  and  female,  both 
universal  and  particular,  common  and  proper,  generic  and  spe- 
cific,'physical  and  moral ;  so  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  vir  (or 
inward  man)  to  individualize  himself  absolutely  to  the  divine 
regard  without,  to  that  extent,  prejudicing  the  homo  (or  outward 
man),  and  hence  defeating  any  schemes  he  may  cherish  upon 
deity  by  the  very  method  he  takes  to  carry  them  out.  It  is  as 
if  Eve,  being  consubstantiate  with  Adam,  should  nevertheless 
attempt  to  bring  forth  fruit  of  herself  alone,  or  in  spite  of  his 
concurrence  rather  than  by  its  favor.  It  is  however  just  this 
hallucination  which  according  to  Swedenborg  bases  the  church 
in  man,  or  underlies  his  distinctively  religious  life.  The  vir,  or 
moral  subject,  enjoys  a  sensible  absoluteness  with  respect  to  the 
homo  ;  that  is,  he  feels  himself  to  be  independent  of  the  race, 
or  his  kind  ;  and  at  the  beck  of  this  purely  sensuous  instinct 
(which  in  scripture  symbolism  is  called  the  serpent) ,  he  aspires 
"  to  become  like  God,  knowing  good  and  evil "  ;  that  is,  to  be 
good  and  wise  in  himself,  irrespectively  of  his  intimate  unity  or 
solidarity  with  all  mankind.  He  instinctively  aspires,  in  other 
words,  to  bring  himself  near  to  God,  or  achieve  his  spiritual 
safety,  by  the  exercises  of  a  devout  self-love ;  the  invariable 
result  being  never  to  lift  himself  up  to  divine  dimensions,  but 
*  See  Appendix,  note  C. 


THE   SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  93 

to  degrade  the  deity  to  his  own  spiritual  stature.  Hence  that 
life  of  inward  self-abasement  or  anguish  in  the  human  bosom, 
which  I  have  above  pictured  as  constituting  the  sole  spiritual 
reality  of  the  church,  the  only. true  life  of  religion  on  the  earth, 
being  the  literal  descent  of  the  divine  to  the  human  nature,  and 
which  will  ultimately  bring  about  that  regenerate  social  senti- 
ment of  men  on  earth  and  in  heaven,  which  constitutes  the 
ascent  of  the  human  to  the  divine  nature. 

Let  us  linger  here  a  little  while  that  we  may  the  more  per- 
fectly understand  ourselves. 

What  in  effect  I  have  been  saying  all  along  is,  that  morality 
is  not  a  personal  or  specific  endowment  of  man,  but  a  rigidly 
natural  or  generic  one.*  It  is  the  badge,  not  of  this,  that,  or 
the  other  man,  but  of  all  men  alike,  just  in  so  far  as  they  are 
men  at  all.  It  characterizes  no  special  subject  of  human  nature, 
but  the  very  nature  itself.  It  is  indeed  the  essence  of  human 
nature ;  the  logical  differentia  between  man  and  the  brute ;  being 
what  characterizes  him  expressly  as  man,  or  in  so  far  as  he  is 
neither  mineral,  vegetable,  nor  animal ;  so  that  no  man  is  a  man 
in  the  proper  force  of  the  word,  unless  he  be  a  moral  subject. 

Now  if  morality  be  as  here  alleged  the  distinctive  sign  of 
human  nature,  that  is  to  say,  if  a  man  is  moral,  not  by  virtue  of 
what  he  is  or  has  in  contradistinction  to  his  fellows,  but  solely 
by  virtue  of  what  he  is  or  has  in  common  with  all  other  men, 
it  is  at  once  obvious  that  the  moral  subject,  as  such,  must  straight- 
way disown  every  spiritual  qualification,  i.  e.  disavow  any  di- 
rect approximation  to  the  infinite,  any  such  approximation  as 
does  not  rigidly  presuppose  that  of  his  kind.  He  may  claim  to 
be  spiritually  affiliated  to  God,  if  he  please,  but  not  in  his  own 

*  Certain  recent  writers,  ambitious  to  rejuvenate  the  old  theology  by  giving  it  a 
quasi  rational  sanction,  have  labored  hard  to  sophisticate  this  truth,  by  representing 
morality  not  as  a  natural  but  as  a  distinctly  supernatural  fact ;  but  with  no  other 
effect  than  to  signalize  their  own  incompetence,  since  their  whole  labor  is  built 
upon  a  transparent  quibble,  that  of  confounding  morality  with  moral  goodness, 
so  blinking  moral  evil  out  of  sight.  Certainly  moral  or  voluntary  goodness  ex- 
ists only  by  the  antagonism  of  like  evil ;  and  if  therefore  moral  good  be  supernatural 
or  claim  a  divine  source,  moral  evil  has  every  right  to  be  equally  exacting.  The 
more  hardy  leaders  accordingly  in  this  enterprise  do  not  hesitate  virtually  to  adopt 
the  manichean  hypothesis  of  creation,  and  trace  back  the  existing  evil  of  the 
creature  to  an  "  evil  possibility  "  in  the  divine  nature !  See  Dr.  Bushnell's  "  Na- 
ture and  the  Supernatural." 


94  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOBG. 

right,  and  only  by  virtue  of  a  previous  spiritual  affiliation  of 
the  race.  In  other  words,  the  moral  subject  is  self-debarred  the 
least  spiritual  attainment — the  attainment,  for  example,  of  any 
such  bosom  rectitude  as  argues  in  him  the  least  legitimate  supe- 
riority to  his  kind,  or  elevates  him  above  the  uniform  level  of 
human  nature.  No  doubt  a  fallacious  appearance  of  things  is 
apt  to  drown  out  the  truth  upon  this  subject  to  a  superficial 
observation.  No  doubt  many  persons  habitually  ascribe  to 
themselves,  and  find  others  ready  to  justify  them  in  so  doing,  a 
spiritual  rectitude  or  supernatural  merit.  But  this  is  only 
because  such  persons  are  spiritually  below  the  level  of  their  kind, 
rather  than  quite  up  to  it,  let  alone  above  it.  That  is  to  say,  it 
is  because  their  intelligence  is  still  childish  or  rank,  is  still  con- 
trolled by  sense  in  place  of  being  served  by  it ;  or,  what  is  the 
same  thing,  because  they  are  still  in  the  habit  of  reasoning  as 
children  do,  from  appearance  to  reality,  from  without  to  within, 
and  not  as  cultivated  men  do,  from  within  to  without,  or  from 
reality  to  appearance.  But  the  truth  utterly  and  invariably 
rebukes  their  pretension.  The  truth  utterly  falsifies  every  claim 
the  individual  man  puts  forth  to  a  measure  of  virtue  which  legit- 
imately reflects  the  least  spiritual  discredit  upon  any  other  man, 
however  conventionally  depraved  he  may  be.  For  it  proves  our 
moral  aspiration  in  every  such  case  to  be  the  fruit  of  a  strictly 
natural  inspiration,  the  prompting  or  play  in  fact  of  an  enven- 
omed self-love ;  and  in  place  therefore  of  justifying  our  easy 
self-complacency,  our  habitual  self-righteousness,  it  stamps  us 
as  at  best  —  or  in  our  highest  moral  states  —  only  fallaciously 
individualized  from  our  kind,  while  in  reality  we  are  more  deeply 
fehan  ever  implicated  with  it. 

But  if  all  this  be  true  ;  if  it  be  true  that  the  vir,  which  is  the 
feminine,  specific,  or  moral  element  in  consciousness,  be  thus 
invincibly  limited  by  the  homo,  which  is  its  masculine,  generic, 
or  physical  element ;  then  it  follows,  unquestionably,  that  the 
moral  subject  as  such  is  inhibited  any  direct  access  to,  or  com- 
merce with,  God,  and  obliged  to  depend,  consequently,  for  his 
coveted  reconciliation  with  him,  upon  some  redemptive  work  of 
God,  which  shall,  if  possible,  revolutionize  the  constitutional 
order  of  his  consciousness,  by  making  what  has  hitherto  been 
first  in  it  last,  and  what  hitherto  has  been  last  first.  Notori- 


THE   SECEET   OF   SWEDENBOKG.  95 

ously  all  divine  prophecy  or  promise  has  been  identified  with  the 
"  seed  of  the  woman,"  not  of  the  man ;  but  if  the  woman  be 
inveterately  subject  to  the  man  —  if,  in  other  words,  our  moral 
power  is  limited  by  our  physical  constitution  —  how  shall  these 
grand  immemorial  prophecies  ever  be  fulfilled  ?  Manifestly 
only  in  one  way  ;  by  the  actual  regeneration  of  nature,  which 
means  the  marriage  of  the  homo  and  the  vir^  or  its  male  and 
female  elements  ;  which  again  means  the  eternal  unification  of 
the  distinctively  human  element  in  consciousness,  with  its  dis- 
tinctively cosmical  element  ;  which  still  again  means  the  per- 
fect humanization  henceforward,  or  exaltation  to  exclusively 
human  form,  of  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  substance. 

Now  this  perfect  marriage  of  the  male  and  female  elements 
in  creation  —  this  complete  unification  or  equalization  of  the 
Tiomo  and  the  vir,  of  the  cosmical  and  the  domestic  soul  —  man- 
ifestly appeals  for  its  realization  to  the  advent  of  a  true  society 
or  fellowship  among  men.  It  is  only  in  the  race's  social  evolu- 
tion that  our  absolute  and  our  contingent  interests  become  har- 
monized ;  that  our  physical  interests,  which  are  those  of  force 
or  necessity,  put  on  an  altogether  conciliatory  aspect  towards 
our  moral  interests,  which  are  those  of  freedom  or  pleasure. 
In  a  true  society  or  brotherhood  of  men,  and  in  this  alone,  our 
organic  appetites  and  passions,  which  constitute  the  realm  of 
necessity  or  force  in  us  (so  linking  us  with  the  outward  and 
finite),  freely  defer  to  our  rational  affections  and  thoughts,  which 
constitute  the  realm  of  freedom  in  us  (so  linking  us  with  the 
inward  and  infinite).  But  human  society,  human  brotherhood, 
human  equality,  is  the  slowest  fruit  of  the  ages,  is  indeed  the 
culminating  truth  of  human  destiny,  and  comes  to  consciousness 
in  the  race,  as  we  have  already  seen,  only  when  the  race  shall 
have  definitively  exhausted  its  domestic,  its  civic,  and  its  politi- 
cal consciousness.  Meanwhile  what  shall  take  the  place  of  so- 
ciety, or  proclaim  itself  its  true  vicegerent,  so  keeping  the  crea- 
tive name  and  order  temporarily  alive  in  the  earth,  if  not  THE 
CHURCH  ;  that  is  to  say,  that  purely  formal  or  provisional  society, 
that  purely  representative  fellowship  or  brotherhood  of  man 
with  man,  which  has  hitherto  alone  claimed  a  divine  institution 
upon  the  earth  ? 

Thus  the  church  itself,  according  to  Swedenborg,  is  no  finality, 


96  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

but  a  mere  providential  lieutenancy,  instituted  in  the  interests 
exclusively  of  the  divine  righteousness,  which  is  universal  jus- 
tice upon  the  earth  ;  such  justice  or  righteousness  being  identi- 
cal with  human  society,  which  means  the  frank  and  cordial 
fellowship  or  equalization  of  every  man  of  woman  born,  not 
only  with  every  other  man,  but  with  all  other  men  put  together, 
and  of  all  men  consequently  with  each  individual  man.  He 
found,  by  the  opening  of  his  spiritual  sight,  or  his  discovery 
of  the  interior  contents  of  revelation,  that  the  sole  reality  or 
justification  of  the  church  lay  in  the  spiritual  use  it  promotes 
as  a  divine  menstruum  or  sieve,  to  sift  out  the  wheat  of  human 
nature  from  its  chaff,  or  separate  its  nutritive  from  its  waste 
material.  The  wheat  of  humankind,  spiritually  regarded,  are 
those  who  acknowledge  God's  NATURAL  HUMANITY,  or  give 
man  the  primary  place  in  the  divine  counsels,  nature  and  history 
a  secondary  and  derivative  one.  In  other  words,  they  hold  man 
to  be  no  longer  the  finite  subject,  but  the  divine  or  infinite  ob- 
ject of  all  created  order.  And  its  chaff,  of  course,  are  those 
who  take  the  opposite  view,  or  remain  pertinaciously  addicted  to 
the  inspiration  of  sense,  which  teaches  that  nature  and  history 
are  a  divine  finality,  or  substance  in  themselves,  when  in  truth 
they  are  a  mere  sensuous  correspondence  of  the  absolute  divine 
substance  which  is  latent  exclusively  in  the  human  form. 

The  importance  of  the  sifting  function  thus  assigned  by  Swe- 
denborg  to  the  church,  in  its  bearing  upon  the  spiritual  creation, 
or  the  universe  of  human  affection  and  thought,  cannot  be  ex- 
aggerated, when  we  consider  that  God  is  the  sole  substance  of 
that  universe ;  and  that  livingly  to  acknowledge  him,  therefore, 
or  to  have  our  will  and  understanding  inwardly  open  to  the 
access  of  his  goodness  and  truth,  is  no  less  essential  to  our  spir- 
itual existence,  than  to  be  nourished  by  food  capable  of  assimi- 
lation to  our  flesh  and  blood  is  essential  to  our  natural  existence. 
We  shall  not  be  surprised,  accordingly,  at  the  immense  intel- 
lectual significance  Swedenborg  puts  upon  the  church,  when 
he  represents  it  as  promoting  the  same  vital  uses  to  the  race's 
spiritual  body,  that  the  heart  promotes  to  man's  natural  body. 
As  the  heart  has  a  double  o'ffice  to  fulfil,  first  a  death-bearing 
and  then  a  life-giving  one,  so  the  church,  according  to  Sweden- 
borg, has  both  a  literal  and  a  spiritual  aspect,  both  a  body  and  a 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  97 

soul ;  the  former  allying  us  with  hell,  the  latter  alone  with 
heaven.  As  the  heart  attracts  to  itself  the  vitiated  blood  of  the 
body,  gross,  lifeless,  blackened  with  the  foul  humors  discharged 
into  it  through  its  long  circuit,  so  exactly  the  church,  as  the 
spiritual  heart  of  mankind,  attracts  to  itself,  in  its  outward  or 
visible  form,  by  the  heavenly  sanctions  or  lures  it  holds  out  to 
our  personal  ambition  and  avarice,  the  most  selfish,  the  most 
despotic,  the  most  worldly  tempers  among  men.  And  as  the 
heart,  having  gathered  the  corrupt  or  debilitated  blood  of  the 
body  to  its  embrace,  makes  haste  to  hand  it  over  to  the  lungs  to 
be  defecated,  washed,  and  renewed  for  use  by  contact  with  the 
atmosphere,  so  in  like  manner  the  church,  in  spiritually  or  in- 
wardly reacting  against  the  ungodly  influences  which  as  a  car- 
nal economy  it  attracts,  becomes  itself  renovated  or  washed 
clean  of  defilement,  shakes  off  its  waste  deciduous  members, 
purges  itself,  in  other  words,  of  all  subjective  aims  and  preten- 
sions, by  identifying  itself  ever  more  and  more  only  with  God's 
impersonal  and  objective  uses  to  all  mankind.  In  short,  it  be- 
comes convertible  with  heaven  ;  heaven  being  a  state  of  culture 
in  man  in  which  charity  or  regard  for  others  claims  the  first 
place,  and  prudence  or  regard  for  self  takes  the  second  place. 
The  entire  history  of  the  church,  by  Swedenborg's  showing, 
amounts  to  this,  neither  more  nor  less,  namely  :  such  a  sheer 
humiliation  on  its  literal  or  ritual  side  of  the  creative  name  to 
the  lowest  level  of  men's  carnal  pride  and  concupiscence,  as  in- 
fallibly begets  in  the  gentile  conscience,  or  common  mind  of  the 
race,  an  inmost  indifference  and  aversion  to  all  consecrated  au- 
thority, to  all  private  or  personal  sanctity,  to  all  exceptional  or 
privileged  worth,  and  leads  it  eventually  to  associate  God's  living 
honor  and  worship  only  with  the  reverence  of  every  individual 
man,  however  conventionally  "  common  or  unclean." 

No  one,  of  course,  can  be  expected  to  do  justice  to  Sweden- 
borg's spiritual  physiology,  unless  he  constantly  remind  himself 
that  heaven  and  hell  are  only  the  sharply  contrasted  processes  of 
nutrition  and  waste,  which  go  to  the  formation  of  the  maximus 
homo,  the  lord,  or  divine  NATURAL  man,  and  hence  bear  a  strict 
proportion  to  the  varying  states  of  the  church  on  earth.  So 
long  as  the  truth  of  the  divine  NATURAL  humanity,  or  of  God's 
strictly  creative  presence  in  our  nature  and  history,  is  scientif 


98  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

ically  ignored  by  the  human  understanding,  being  at  most  only 
representatively  avouched  by  the  church,  human  life  must  ne- 
cessarily exhibit  a  more  or  less  conflicting  aspect  in  every  sphere 
of  its  activity.  And  when  this  conflict  becomes  at  last  intolera- 
ble, that  is  to  say,  when  the  principle  of  authority  in  the  church 
(faith)  becomes  so  envenomed  and  insolent  as  actually  to  over- 
bear the  free  principle  (charity),  instant  equilibrium  ensues  in 
"  the  world  of  spirits  "  (as  Swedenborg  names  that  province  of 
the  maximus  homo  which  answers  to  the  stomach  in  the  finite 
organization),  by  an  additionally  stringent  separation  of  evil 
spheres  from  good ;  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  a  freer  elimina- 
tion and  excretion  of  the  waste  substances  of  the  spiritual  body. 
The  existence  of  hell,  as  a  spiritual  phenomenon,  marks  a  su- 
perfluous divine  energy  in  the  earth  ;  that  is  to  say,  an  energy 
not  as  yet  fully  wrought  into  the  tissue  of  human  nature,  not  as 
yet  fully  authenticated  and  utilized  by  the  tenor  of  our  daily 
life,  and  liable  to  come  forth  consequently  in  perverse  and  dis- 
orderly modes  of  manifestation.  As  long  as  men  believe  in  the 
unconditioned  nature  of  morality,  and  therefore  attribute  to 
themselves  a  selfhood  or  freedom  no  less  absolute  in  truth  or 
reality  than  it  is  in  fact  or  appearance,  so  long,  of  course,  they 
will  be  unable  to  recognize  the  truth  of  the  divine  natural  hu- 
manity ;  and  while  this  truth  remains  unrecognized,  men  must 
continue  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  finite  knowledge,  or  hold  good 
and  evil  to  be  essentially  irreconcilable.  That  hell  (or  self- 
love)  in  this  state  of  things  should  be  allowed  freely  to  precipi- 
tate itself  from  heaven  therefore,  and  come  under  the  permanent 
though  unconscious  subjection  of  the  latter,  is  as  much  a  pro- 
vision of  cosmical  order  or  spiritual  hygiene,  as  the  separation 
of  the  waste  matters  of  the  body  from  our  houses,  and  their 
incarceration  in  appropriate  receptacles,  is  a  provision  of  civic 
order  or  domestic  hygiene.  No  doubt  the  church  will  one  day 
lay  off  her  tattered  grave-clothes,  the  tarnished  livery  of  death 
in  which  her  persistent  devotion  to  the  letter  of  truth  exclu- 
sively has  hitherto  bound  her,  and  put  on  her  resurrection  gar- 
ments in  the  acknowledgment  of  the  divine  natural  humanity, 
or  of  God's  living  presence  and  power  in  every  form  of  human 
life,  whether  conventionally  sacred  or  profane,  celestial  or  infer- 
nal. Then  the  church  will  have  learned  to  disown  all  private 


THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  99 

ends,  all  purposes  of  self-seeking,  whatsoever  makes  its  interests 
as  now  alien  to  those  of  the  secular  or  common  life  of  man  ; 
will  have  learned,  in  short,  to  identify  herself  with  the  broadest 
human  society  or  fellowship.  At  that  time  I  presume  the  selfish 
or  hellish  element  in  our  nature  will  have  become  so  completely 
harmonized  with  the  equitable  or  heavenly  element,  by  their 
joint  and  equal  subjugation  to  the  uses  of  the  divine  natural 
humanity,  which  are  the  ends  exclusively  of  a  unitary  society 
or  universal  fellowship  among  men,  that  no  scientific  but  only  a 
purely  philosophic  discrimination  of  hell  from  heaven  will  be 
any  longer  possible.  That  is  to  say,  the  mind  of  spiritual  or 
philosophic  culture  alone  will  recognize  hell,  and  that  no  longer 
as  denoting  a  particular  style  of  persons  in  humanity  incapable 
of  celestial  assimilation,  but  as  denoting  the  very  principle  of 
personality  or  selfhood  in  man  universally,  considered  as  abso- 
lute or  independent.  The  Christian  hells,  regarded  as  antag- 
onizing the  heavens,  will  thenceforth  be  "shut  up,"  as  Swe- 
denborg  describes  the  fate  of  the  antediluvian  hells,  by  minis- 
tering to  no  further  scientific  human  use.  Use  is  the  only  oxy- 
gen that  ever  kindled  their  lurid  glow,  and  this  being  taken 
away,  they  must  of  sheer  necessity  collapse,  become  extinct, 
die  out,  just  as  a  fire  dies  out  deprived  of  vent.  The  church 
has  now  become  elevated  out  of  ritual  into  living  dimensions ;  it 
is  no  longer  a  representative,  but  a  real  human  society  or  broth- 
erhood in  heaven  and  on  earth  ;  and  the  evil  principle  in  our 
nature  (self-love)  being  thus  shorn  of  its  malignity  by  be- 
coming reconciled  to  charity  the  good  principle,  constitutes 
in  fact  henceforth  the  truly  divine  and  invincible  guaranty  of 
social  tranquillity  and  order.* 

*  "It  is  a  point  of  faith/'  says  Swedenborg,  "common  both  to  the  old  and  new 
dispensation,  that  the  lord  came  into  the  world  to  remove  hell  from  man,  and  that  he 
effected  this  end  by  combats  with  and  victories  over  it,  so  subduing  it  to  himself, 
or  making  it  forever  orderly  and  obedient."  —  True  Christian  Religion,  2.  Again 
he  describes  the  "particular"  faith  of  the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth  in 
human  nature  thus  :  "  God  is  essential  goodness  and  truth,  and  he  manifested  him- 
self in  Christ  for  the  purpose  of  reducing  all  things  in  heaven,  in  hell,  and  in  the 
church  (or  representative  earth)  to  order,  because  at  that  period  the  power  of  hell 
or  evil  had  got  a  greater  purchase  upon  the  human  mind  than  that  of  heaven  or 
good,  and  hence  menaced  a  total  destruction.  This  menace  was  averted  by  the 
lord's  HUMANITY,  which  was  the  divine  truth  (or  manifested  form  of  the  divine 
good),  and  hence  angels  and  men  became  alike  redeemed."  —  Ib.,  3.  See  Appendix, 
note  D. 


100  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 


XVI. 

But  the  urgent  question  before  us,  towards  the  solution  of 
which  we  have  been  all  along  steadfastly  tending,  is,  How  do 
the  hells  become  actually  "  removed  from  man,"  as  Swedenborg 
teaches  us  they  must  be,  in  order  to  the  true  revelation  of  the 
divine  name?  How,  in  other  words,  is  the  transition  histor- 
ically effected  from  the  representative  to  the  real  church,  that  so 
we  may  know  God  no  longer  at  second  hand,  or  reflectively, 
but  directly,  or  as  we  know  ourselves  ?  An  obvious  gulf  sep- 
arates the  two  churches ;  one  being  lifeless  shadow,  the  other 
living  substance ;  and  what  is  capable  of  spanning  it  ?  The 
representative  church  exhibits  the  mV,  or  feminine  element  in 
consciousness,  hopelessly  subject  to  the  homo,  or  masculine  ele- 
ment ;  exhibits  the  distinctively  human  element  in  existence, 
which  is  that  of  individuality  hopelessly  immersed  in  the  cos- 
mical  element,  which  is  that  of  identity  ;  and  the  antagonism, 
consequently,  of  Abel  and  Cain,  of  goodness  and  truth,  of 
heart  and  head,  of  heaven  and  hell,  in  the  human  bosom,  be- 
comes of  necessity  indefinitely  perpetuated.  For  so  long  as  the 
woman  in  us  is  subject  to  the  man  —  i.  e.  so  long  as  our  moral 
force  is  under  the  coercion  of  our  physical  necessities,  and  our 
distinctively  human  genesis  refers  itself,  consequently,  not  to  a 
divine  or  infinite  source,  but  to  what  is  merely  mineral,  vegetable, 
and  animal  in  us  —  it  is  impossible  that  we  should  ever  attain  to 
true  or  spiritual  individuality ;  and  without  this,  of  course,  the 
only  heaven  capable  of  being  formed  is  not  "  formed  out  of  the 
human  race,"  as  Swedenborg  says,  but  only  out  of  infants  and 
persons  of  a  feeble  moral  force,  whom  the  divine  providence 
with  infinite  address  constrains  to  their  own  advantage. 

The  new  or  real  church  reverses  this  state  of  things,  or  allows 
a  heaven  to  be  formed  no  longer  out  of  the  mere  debris  or  off- 
scouring  of  humanity,  but  out  of  the  very  race  itself,  by  avouch- 
ing henceforth,  not  the  antagonism  but  the  marriage  of  the 
homo  and  the  vir,  the  man  and  the  woman.  The  new  or  final 
church,  the  fruit  of  God's  long  travail  in  our  nature,  exhibits 
the  distinctively  feminine  and  spiritual  element  in  life,  no  longer 
in  bondage  to  the  masculine  and  material  element,  but  rising 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  101 

superior  to  it,  or  conceiving  and  bringing  forth  directly  of  the 
infinite.  For  the  new  church  is  not  a  representative  church,  but 
a  real  one  ;  allowing  no  priesthood  but  that  of  the  lord,  or 
divine  natural  man,  in  whom  alone  we  all  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being ;  nor  any  instituted  rites  and  ordinances,  but 
those  living  ones  which  are  inspired  by  the  sentiment  of  the 
broadest  human  society,  fellowship,  or  equality.  The  new  and 
final  church  of  God  on  earth  is  indeed  identical  on  its  literal 
side  with  this  secular  society  or  fellowship,  and  whosoever  re- 
spires the  social  spirit  —  whosoever  in  heart  acknowledges  the 
grand  essential  brotherhood  or  equality  of  man  with  man,  in 
spite  of  their  petty  or  obvious  moral  inequalities  —  is  in  full 
spiritual  communion  with  that  church,  and  may  securely  aspire 
to  enjoy  whatsoever  blessedness  it  has  to  offer  either  in  this 
world  or  that  to  come.  No  hell  can  be  bred  of  such  a  church 
accordingly.  For  the  social  evolution  of  human  destiny  means 
—  and  practically,  or  in  fundamentals,  it  means  nothing  what- 
ever but  this  —  such  a  thorough  reconciliation,  or  marriage,  in 
new  forms  of  use  of  the  two  hitherto  warring  principles  of  force 
and  freedom,  self-love  and  charity,  truth  and  goodness,  as  that 
their  fruit  shall  henceforth  be  one  and  identical,  or  equally  tend 
to  the  highest  possible  potentialization  of  human  society.  To 
the  mind  of  the  new  or  true  church,  hell  can  only  signify  a 
reasoned  or  confirmed  denial  of  the  divine  natural  humanity ; 
but  our  coming  social  evolution  bars  out  the  very  possibility  of 
such  denial,  by  putting  the  senses  themselves  on  the  side  of  that 
truth,  or  bribing  them  to  a  more  free  and  easy  appreciation  of  it 
than  is  yielded  even  by  the  soul :  though  of  course  they  will 
have  no  similar  insight  into  its  profound  and  comprehensive 
spiritual  scope. 

Such  is  the  apparently  hopeless  conflict  between  the  old  and 
the  new  —  the  ritual  and  the  real  —  church  in  humanity.  How 
then,  I  repeat,  does  the  chasm  between  the  two  become  histori- 
cally filled  up,  so  as  that  hell  may  at  last  be  "  removed  from 
man,"  and  the  divine  name  consequently  be  hallowed,  the  divine 
kingdom  come,  and  the  divine  will  be  done  as  in  heaven  so  also 
on  the  earth  —  as  in  the  spiritual  world  so  also  in  the  natural  ? 
The  obvious  difficulty,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  way  of  this  historic 
consummation  is  the  limitation  of  human  morality,  or  the  im- 


102  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOKG. 

possibility  of  any  man  so  far  outgrowing  the  restraints  of  his 
hereditary  consciousness,  or  his  subjection  to  nature,  as  to  feel 
himself  really  one  with  the  infinite  goodness,  in  spite  of  all  ap- 
pearances to  the  contrary.  Our  moral  force  is  a  strictly  natural 
or  hereditary  one,  and  cannot  rise  above  its  source.  In  other 
words,  our  self-consciousness  links  us  exclusively  with  the  natural 
or  material  side  of  life,  with  what  gives  us  subjective  existence, 
or  renders  us  phenomenal  to  ourselves ;  and  to  that  extent, 
alienates  us  from  the  spiritual  or  paternal  side  of  life,  from  what 
gives  us  objective  being,  or  allies  us  with  God  :  so  that  we  have, 
as  it  were,  inwardly  to  die  —  to  undergo  a  conscious  death  to 
ourselves — before  we  can  become  emancipated  from  the  shackles 
of  the  finite,  and  rise  into  the  living  discernment  and  participa- 
tion of  our  true  or  infinite  being.  Self-consciousness  restricts 
our  regard  to  the  apparent  differences  which  separate  us  from 
other  men,  the  differences  which  are  obvious  to  sense  ;  and 
never  leads  us  to  suspect  accordingly  that  these  superficial 
differences  are  only  so  many  evidences  of  our  profound  sub- 
stantial identity  with  all  other  men.  We  seem  to  our  own  eyes 
altogether  different  from  others,  now  much  better,  now  much 
worse.  But  this  seeming  is  wholly  shut  up  to  our  own  shallow 
perception  ;  the  truth  of  the  case  being  all  the  while  that  our 
conscious  differences,  the  judgments  of  good  and  evil  we  apply 
to  our  own  character,  are  only  so  many  modulations  of  one 
identical  moral  substance,  so  many  variations  of  one  original 
theme.  Freedom,  selfhood,  moral  force,  is  our  generic,  not  our 
specific  qualification.  It  belongs  to  us  each,  only  in  so  far  as  it 
first  belongs  to  our  kind,  its  whole  end  and  purpose  being  to 
ascertain  that  kind,  or  vindicate  its  universality  :  first,  by  dis- 
engaging it  from  all  lower  kinds ;  and  then  by  turning  these 
latter  from  an  apparently  creative  into  an  abjectly  constitutive 
relation  to  it,  or  making  them  out  of  its  incompetent  tyrannical 
masters  into  its  assiduous,  obsequious  servants.  How  is  it  even 
conceivable  then,  that  you,  or  I,  or  any  man,  should  ever  so  far 
disown  this  hereditary  thraldom,  this  moral  incarceration,  or 
identification  with  his  race,  as  really  to  emerge  in  spiritual  life, 
and  find  himself  in  direct  hand-to-hand  commerce  with  the  in- 
finite ?  The  pretension  is  manifestly  preposterous.  And  yet 
the  total  problem  of  creation,  about  which  alone  the  light  of 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  103 

revelation  revolves,  is  not  to  be  solved  short  of  the  practical 
reconciliation  of  that  contradiction.  That  is  to  say,  somewhere 
in  the  progress  of  history  some  vir  must  be  found  able  to 
transcend  these  hereditary  moral  limitations,  or  personally  uni- 
versalize himself  to  the  dimensions  of  the  Jiomo^  so  bringing  him- 
self into  conscious  oneness  with  the  infinite  ;  or  else  the  mar- 
riage of  nature  and  man,  of  the  homo  and  the  wr,  of  the  cos- 
mos and  the  earth,  must  remain  forever  unconsummated,  and 
human  society  turn  out,  not  an  eternal  monument  of  the  in- 
finite divine  love,  but  an  abortive  effort  of  his  wholly  incommen- 
surate wisdom  and  power. 

On  Swedenborg's  ontological  principles,  or  intellectual  method, 
as  we  have  already  to  some  extent  seen,  nothing  is  more  practi- 
cable than  the  perfect  solution  of  this  problem.  Undoubtedly 
his  method  affronts  our  sensuous  prejudices,  sacred  and  profane, 
religious  and  scientific.  But  this  circumstance  should  rather 
conciliate  than  avert  our  respect,  when  we  consider  to  what  a 
complete  blind-alley  our  intellectual  prejudices  of  both  sorts  are 
bringing  us :  the  devotee  being  afraid  to  trust  his  scientific  in- 
stincts, lest » his  faith  suffer  shipwreck ;  and  the  sceptic  being 
equally  afraid  to  confide  in  his  religious  instincts,  lest  his  knowl- 
edge undergo  eclipse.  Take  any  two  men  of  equal  culture  who 
represent  the  existing  reciprocal  jealousy  of  science  and  faith, 
say  Strauss  and  Neander,  or  Mill  and  Mansel.  Can  any  one 
be  so  infatuated,  or,  as  the  phrase  is,  so  good-natured,  as  to  sup- 
pose that,  between  minds  so  mutually  balanced  or  reciprocally 
limited  as  these,  any  reconciliation  is  possible  upon  the  data 
already  tediously  trite  and  common  to  them  both,  that  is,  with- 
out some  altogether  new  philosophic  insight?  Credat  Judceus 
Apella,)  non  ego.  And  if  this  hope  has  grown  simply  desperate, 
how  incumbent  is  it  upon  all  men  of  sense  and  uprightness  who 
suffer  from  our  existing  mental  chaos,  to  seek  help  wherever 
they  can  find  it,  even,  if  need  be,  at  so  unpromising  a  source  as 
the  books  of  Swedenborg ! 

I  have  already  shown  to  some  extent  in  what  way  Sweden- 
borg helps  the  intellect,  but  much  still  remains  behind ;  and  in 
order  to  do  the  fullest  possible  justice  to  the  subject,  it  is  neces- 
sary that  I  define,  even  still  more  exactly  than  I  have  yet  done, 
the  prevalent  but  deep-seated  and  unsuspected  intellectual  mal- 
ady which  so  piteously  invokes  divine  medication. 


104  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

Jew  and  Greek,  devotee  and  sceptic,  churchman  and  states- 
man, Mansel  and  Mill  in  short,  perfectly  agree  in  this,  that  the 
realm  of  nature  is  essentially  objective  to  man,  and  not  merely 
contingently  so.  That  is  to  say,  they  hold  that  nature  is  not 
alone  sensibly  objective  to  him,  as  furnishing  the  proper  ground 
of  his  experience  or  knowledge,  but  also  rationally  objective  to 
him,  as  furnishing  the  definite  goal  of  his  beliefs  ;  so  that  when 
any  event  occurs,  like  the  alleged  birth  of  Christ  from  a  virgin, 
or  his  resurrection  from  death,  to  embarrass  or  cripple  his  habit- 
ual belief,  neither  one  nor  the  other  ever  dreams  of  resenting 
the  wholly  arbitrary  limitation  thus  put  upon  his  intellect,  but 
both  alike  pusillanimously  acquiesce  in  it,  the  only  difference 
between  them  meanwhile  being,  that  Mr.  Mansel  timidly  hastens 
to  save  his  faith  by  renouncing  his  reason,  and  Mr.  Mill  to  save 
his  reason  by  renouncing  his  faith.  The  event,  according  to  Mr. 
Mansel,  transcends  rational  or  scientific  explanation,  being  ad- 
dressed, not  to  our  intelligence,  but  to  our  credulity,  or  instinct 
of  devout  awe  and  wonder ;  while  Mr.  Mill,  on  the  other  hand, 
declares  it  to  be  incredible  and  inadmissible  on  any  hypothesis 
whatever,  simply  because  it  is  unintelligible,  or  violates  the 
fundamental  canons  of  the  understanding  ;  and  when  the  under- 
standing is  obliged  to  be  paralyzed  or  set  at  naught  to  begin  with 
in  divine  things,  it  is  of  no  practical  moment  whether  we  admit 
or  reject  them,  since  in  either  case  alike  our  action  is  sure  to  be 
frivolous,  unmeaning,  and  unmanly. 

Clearly  then  the  sceptic  and  the  devotee  both  alike  maintain, 
in  effect,  that  nature  constitutes  the  legitimate  object  of  which 
man  is  the  subject;  that  it  furnishes  the  inevitable  boundary 
both  of  his  sensible  and  his  intellectual  experience.  And  this 
is  only  saying,  in  other  words,  that  he  is  essentially  finite,  and 
not  merely  existentially  so  ;  finite  not  merely  on  his  maternal  or 
constitutional  side,  wherein  he  stands  related  to  nature  and  his 
fellow-man,  but  also  on  his  paternal  or  creative  side,  wherein 
he  stands  related  to  culture  or  to  spiritual  goodness  and  truth. 
Not  merely  are  we  finite,  according  to  these  disputatious  gentle- 
men, on  the  side  of  our  consciousness,  or  as  we  phenomenally 
exist  in  ourselves,  but  we  are  equally  finite  also  on  our  uncon- 
scious side,  or  as  we  really  are  in  God.  For  if  I  am  nature's 
unqualified  subject  —  if  I  am  her  subject  in  an  absolute  as  well 


THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  105 

as  a  contingent  sense,  inwardly  no  less  than  outwardly,  ration- 
ally as  well  as  sensibly,  specifically,  or  in  all  those  respects 
wherein  I  am  individualized  from  my  kind,  no  less  than  gener- 
ically,  or  in  all  those  respects  wherein  I  am  identified  with  it  — 
why  then  the  manifest  inference  from  such  a  state  of  things  is, 
that  I  am  not  only  apparently  but  essentially  finite  ;  finite  in 
myself  and  finite  in  my  source ;  finite  in  body  and  finite  in  soul ; 
naturally  finite  and  spiritually  finite  ;  in  short,  both  actually  and 
really,  which  means  hopelessly  and  irremediably,  finite. 

We  may  say  then  that  our  prevalent  intellectual  malady,  as 
measured  against  Swedenborg's  robust  sanity,  consists  in  low  and 
sensuous  conceptions  of  the  relation  between  man  and  God,  or  in 
a  spiritual  ignorance  on  the  part  of  our  religious  and  scientific 
guides,  amounting  to  fatuity.  And  this  statement,  while  it  pre- 
pares us  to  estimate  the  advantage  which  Swedenborg's  books 
will  eventually  confer  upon  true  faith  and  true  science  —  that  is, 
upon  a  faith  divorced  from  superstition,  and  a  science  divorced 
from  sense  —  will  also  enable  us  to  discern  that  precise  and  pro- 
found intellectual  significance  in  them,  which  insures  meanwhile 
that  they  shall  prove  a  downright  odium  to  Mr.  Mansel,  a  down- 
right folly  to  Mr.  Mill. 

XVII. 

The  first  thing  accordingly  that  strikes  you  in  looking  to 
Swedenborg  for  light  upon  this  inglorious  contention  of  faith 
and  science,  is  that  he  palpably  overlooks  it,  or  takes  no  appar- 
ent interest  in  its  fluctuating  fortunes.  But  a  second  more 
attentive  look  explains  this  indifference,  since  it  exhibits  him 
industriously  bent  upon  vacating  or  exhausting  the  conceded  intel- 
lectual foundations,  upon  which  alone  such  an  unfriendly  rivalry 
becomes  either  possible  or  conceivable.  If  you  pay  attention  to 
what  you  read,  you  will  easily  hear  him  saying  in  effect  or  sub 
voce  to  both  parties :  "  Your  dispute,  gentlemen,  admits  of  no 
decision,  but  prorogues  itself  to  a/i  ever-indefinite  future,  because 
you  are  both  alike  destitute  of  that  true  intellectual  insight  — 
based  upon  a  spiritual  apprehension  of  creation  —  which  alone 
can  enable  you  to  settle  it,  and  are  left  meanwhile  to  espouse 
any  plausible  interest  which  happens  to  enlist  your  hereditary 


106  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.     - 

prejudices.  You  both  alike  maintain  in  truth,  whatever  you 
may  do  in  fact,  that  nature  is  the  limit,  not  the  starting-point,  of 
creation ;  that  it  is  the  controlling  end,  not  the  servile  means  or 
pliant  method,  of  the  creative  power:  the  consequence  being 
that  you,  Mr.  Mansel,  from  your  point  of  view,  have  no  occasion 
for  a  god  who  is  not  the  jealous  and  implacable  rival  of  nature  ; 
nor  you,  Mr.  Mill,  from  your  point  of  view,  any  occasion  for  one 
who  is  not  its  unlimited  servant,  its  idle  and  abject  tool." 

The  regeneration,  then,  which  Swedenborg's  spiritual  dis- 
closures bring  to  faith  and  to  science  quite  equally  consists  in  a 
totally  new  conception  of  the  creative  power,  whereby,  on  the 
one  hand,  nature,  or  the  cosmos,  is  turned  from  an  objective 
into  a  subjective  work  of  God,  which  alone  it  is  ;  and  man,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  turned  from  a  subjective  work  of  God,  which 
he  is  not,  into  an  objective  work,  which  alone  he  truly  is. 

Swedenborg's  ontological  starting-point,  as  we  have  seen  all 
along,  is  that  the  life  of  man  in  nature  is  but  an  appearance, 
whereof  the  lord,  or  divine  natural  man,  is  the  sole  reality. 
To  be  sure,  we  habitually  appropriate  to  ourselves  an  absolute  or 
independent  status,  a  freedom  or  selfhood  unqualifiedly  our 
own,  which  invests  us  to  our  own  imaginations  with  an  exclusive 
and  inalienable  property  in  our  actions.  And  the  creative 
wisdom,  intent  upon  the  interests  of  our  natural  renovation,  of 
our  eventual  flesh-and-blood  resurrection,  which  is  our  ultimate 
social  evolution,  mercifully  authenticates  this  illusion  meanwhile 
by  endowing  it  with  the  sanctions  of  conscience,  or  suffering  it 
to  beget  the  provisional  discrimination  of  heaven  and  hell  in 
human  character.  But  apart  from  this  incidental  or  contingent 
use,  the  thing  is  all  the  while  a  gross  hallucination.  The  true 
or  spiritual  creation  ignores  the  sentiment  of  morality  in  its 
subjects,  i.  e.  disallows  the  distinction  of  good  and  evil  among 
men,  as  at  all  pertinent  to  the  divine  mind.*  No  angel  that 

*  "  People  who  are  destitute  of  charity,"  says  Swedenborg,  "  continually  con- 
temn and  condemn  others,  save  in  so  far  as  prudence  constrains  them  to  put  on 
friendly  manners.  But  they  who  are  in  charity  can  scarcely  see  another's  evils ;  on 
the  contrary,  while  they  note  all  that  is  good  and  true  in  him,  they  interpret  what- 
soever is  evil  and  false  in  a  favorable  sense.  This  disposition  they  derive  from  the 
lord,  WHO  TURNS  ALL  EVIL  INTO  GOOD.  The  lord  is  as  far  from  cursing  and 
being  angry  with  men,  as  heaven  is  far  from  earth.  For  who  can  conceive  that  the 
omniscient  and  omnipotent  ruler  of  the  universe,  who  is  infinitely  above  all 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  107 

Swedenborg  encountered  was  ever  so  foolish  as  to  attribute  the 
good  which  was  visible  in  him  to  himself ;  and  no  devil  was  ever 
wise  enough  not  to  do  so.  The  fundamental  difference,  in  short, 
between  Swedenborg's  angels  and  devils  was  the  difference 
between  humility  and  loftiness ;  the  latter  always  cherishing  an 
unsubdued  selfhood,  or  pride  of  character,  the  former  being 
always  more  or  less  cultivated  out  of  it. 

How  does  this  ontological  postulate  of  Swedenborg  justify 
itself?  On  what  ground  are  we  entitled  to  regard  our  moral 
consciousness  as  a  sheer  fallacy  of  the  sensuous  understanding, 
save  in  so  far  as  it  is  redeemed  to  truth  by  its  uses  to  the 
spiritual  evolution  of  human  destiny  ?  On  the  ground  of  its 
being  a  distinctly  generic,  and  not  a  specific  endowment  of  the 
subject ;  or  because  it  is  what  he  has  in  strict  community  with  his 
kind,  and  not,  as  he  himself  fondly  conceives,  in  distinction  from 
it.  Morality  is  the  common  possession  of  human  nature  just  as 
inertia  is  a  common  possession  of  the  mineral  nature,  growth 
of  the  vegetable,  and  motion  of  the  animal,  and  utterly  scorns, 
therefore,  our  private  appropriation.  That  we  do  nevertheless 
privately  appropriate  it,  is  no  presumption  against  the  truth,  but 
only  a  presumption  of  our  ignorance  of  the  truth.  We  habit- 
ually attribute  to  ourselves  an  absolute  freedom,  or  personality ; 
we  habitually  fancy  that  we  are  something  in  ourselves,  not  only 
generically,  or  as  we  stand  identified  with  all  other  men,  but 
also,  and  much  more,  specifically,  or  as  we  stand  individualized 
from  them ;  and  are  in  no  way  surprised  to  learn  accordingly 
from  our  foolish  teachers  and  preachers,  that  we  have  each  of  us 
an  absolutely  good  or  evil  status  in  God's  sight,  and  must  be 
prepared  to  expect  his  everlasting  personal  approbation  or  dis- 
approbation. But  all  this  is  stigmatized  by  Swedenborg's  higher 
spiritual  insight  as  the  grovelling  wisdom  of  the  serpent,  or  as 
the  dictate  of  a  purely  sensuous  intelligence,  which  makes 
natural  fact  or  appearance  a  direct  measure  of  spiritual  truth 
or  reality,  and  not  the  rigidly  inverse  one  which  alone  it  is.* 

infirmity,  should  be  angry  with  such  poor  and  wretched  dust  as  men  are,  who 
scarcely  know  anything  they  do,  and  can  do  nothing,  of  their  own  motion,  but  what 
is  evil  1  There  is  nothing  in  the  lord  disposing  him  to  anger,  but  only  to  mercy."  — 
A.  C.  1079,  1080,  1093. 

*  "  Neither  angel  nor  devil,"  says  Swedenborg,  "  has  the  least  inherent  power ; 
if  they  had  the  least  particle,  heaven  would  crumble  to  pieces,  hell  become  a  chaos, 


108  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBOBG. 

While  this  immature  mental  condition  of  the  race  endures,  God 
appears  to  our  imagination  as  altogether  like  ourselves,  only  in 
aggravated  form ;  that  is,  as  an  intensely  finite  or  personal 
being,  a  supreme  self-lover  in  short,  gracious  to  those  that  please 
him,  and  hateful  to  those  who  displease  him ;  so  that  heaven  and 
hell  (or  a  pronounced  spiritual  separation  of  mankind  into  sheep 
and  goats)  become  an  inevitable  provisional  necessity  of  human 
freedom. 

What  morality  is,  then,  is  very  plain.  It  is  the  badge  of 
human  nature,  the  point  of  difference  between  man  as  man  and 
all  lower  existences.  And  what  morality — being  what  it 
actually  is  —  really  or  spiritually  means,  i.  e.  what  it  implies  with 
respect  both  to  man's  origin  and  destiny,  is  also  becoming  plain. 
It  does  not  mean  the  aggrandizement  of  this,  that,  or  the  other 
petty  person,  but  the  aggrandizement  of  human  nature  itself  to 
truly  divine  dimensions.  It  means  the  divinization,  not  of  this, 
that,  or  the  other  vir,  or  specific  man,  but  of  the  homo,  or  generic 
man,  which  is  humanity  itself,  and  its  investiture  with  infinite 
attributes.  It  contemplates  the  exaltation  of  humanity  itself  out 
of  those  purely  subjective  and  constitutional  limitations  of  good 
and  evil,  wise  and  silly,  great  and  small,  celestial  and  infernal, 
bred  of  the  vir,  or  specific  man,  into  objective  and  unitary  pro- 
portions, or  the  consciousness  of  its  proper  infinitude,  as  a 
universal  human  society  or  brotherhood.  This  is  the  distinction 
of  the  human  from  all  lower  forms  of  existence,  whether 
mineral,  vegetable,  or  animal,  that  it  is  a  SOCIAL  form,  which 
means  that  its  two  component  elements  of  genus  and  species, 
of  identity  and  difference,  are  essentially  matched  or  mated, 
and  therefore  eternally  invoke  each  other,  or  seek  a  more  free 
and  intimate  experimental  union.  It  is  a  composite,  not  a  simple 
form,  and  therefore  disowns  the  mere  concubinage  which  binds 
together  the  component  elements  of  lower  natures,  while  it 

and  with  these  every  man  would  cease  to  exist."  —  Athanasian  Creed,  34.  "  I  once 
heard  a  celestial  voice  saying,  that  if  a  spark  of  life  in  man  were  his  own,  and  not 
exclusively  of  God  in  him,  heaven  could  not  exist,  nor  anything  belonging  to 
heaven  ;  hence,  no  church  on  earth,  and  consequently  no  eternal  life."  —  Intercourse 
of  Soul  and  Body,  11.  "  The  angels  think  that  no  man  has  a  grain  of  will  or  pru- 
dence which  is  properly  his  own ;  they  say  that  if  he  had,  heaven  and  hell  would  no 
longer  hold  together,  and  the  whole  human  race  would  perish."  —  Divine  Prov- 
idence, 293. 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  109 

makes  marriage  the  very  law  of  its  existence.  It  is  a  form 
which  presents  in  itself  the  intensest  objective  unity  or  harmony 
of  two  forces,  which  in  all  subjective  aspects  are  as  dispropor- 
tionate and  irreconcilable  as  heaven  and  hell,  namely,  an 
infinite  creative  force,  and  a  finite  constitutive  one :  one  being, 
in  reference  to  the  other,  merely  generic  or  quantifying,  and 
therefore  regarded  as  relatively  mean  or  base ;  the  other,  again, 
with  respect  to  that,  specific  or  qualifying,  and  therefore  re- 
garded as  relatively  high  or  honorable.  No  such  marriage 
relation  as  this  obtains  out  of  human  nature.  No  such  society, 
fellowship,  or  equality  is  ever  felt  between  the  generic  tiger  and 
the  specific  tiger.  The  specific  tiger  is  wholly  incapable  of 
respecting  his  kind  as  he  respects  himself,  or  loving  his  brother' 
tiger's  advantage  no  less  than  he  loves  his  own.  No  animal, 
much  less  any  vegetable  or  mineral,  of  course,  has  ever  betrayed, 
since  time  began,  any  evidence  of  a  social  sentiment,  any  evi- 
dence of  a  higher  objectivity  than  the  indulgence  of  his  selfish 
instincts.  No  animal  has  ever  exhibited  the  faintest  evidence  of 
an  inward  conflict  between  his  instinct  and  his  aspiration,  be- 
tween his  inherited  nature  and  his  acquired  culture.  In  short, 
no  animal  ever  displays  any  traces  of  the  existence  or  operation 
of  conscience,  which  is  pre-eminently  the  citadel  of  the  social 
sentiment  —  the  sentiment  which  makes  us  feel  the  fellowship 
or  equality  of  our  kind,  and  which  may  be  called  therefore  the 
sentiment  of  Jcind-ness.  Kindness  is  unknown  except  to  the 
human  bosom,  and  consequently  worship,  which  alone  elevates  a 
man  above  himself.  Occasionally,  no  doubt,  a  dog  or  a  horse, 
subjected  to  a  regimen  of  fear,  evinces  an  apprehension  of  chastise- 
ment at  its  master's  hands  ;  and  many  a  man,  subjected  to  a  like 
tyrannical  discipline,  proves  to  this  extent  a  good  horse  or  dog. 
But  no  dog  or  horse,  since  the  foundation  of  the  world,  ever 
so  far  humiliated  itself  to  his  master  as  inwardly  to  condemn 
itself,  or  feel  a  conscience  of  sin,  for  doing  the  will  of  the  flesh 
in  lieu  of  its  master's  will.  And  consequently,  no  worshipful, 
but  only  a  mercenary  relation  binds  the  former  to  the  latter.* 

*  No  doubt  the  dog  often  exhibits  a  helpless  attachment  to  the  person  of  its 
master ;  but  this  is  not  because  of  a  human  quality  in  the  dog,  but  because  of  a 
canine  quality  in  the  master.  The  dog,  in  every  such  case,  feels  himself  and  loves 
himself  in  the  master ;  he  feels,  of  course,  not  intelligently  but  instinctively,  how 
grateful  this  fierce  unreasoning  devotion  of  his  to  his  master's  person  proves  to  the 


110  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

But  human  nature  differs  toto  ccelo  in  this  respect  from  all 
lower  natures,  being  essentially  reverential  or  worshipful.  A  re- 
lation, not  of  chance  concubinage  or  lust,  but  of  chaste  wedded 
love,  subsists  between  its  generic  and  specific  elements ;  a  strict 
marriage  unity,  proceeding  first  upon  no  accord,  but  upon  the 
frankest  subjective  discord,  of  the  homo  and  the  vir,  or  the  cosmical 
and  the  domestic  element  in  consciousness,  and  then  upon  their  cor- 
dial objective  harmony  and  co-operation.  But  how  is  this  essen- 
tial marriage  in  humanity  ever  to  become  actual  or  prolific,  so 
long  as  the  parties  to  it  are  forever  held  asunder  as  they  are  in 
the  old  or  representative  church,  and  never  personally  confronted 
or  brought  together  ?  This  was  the  impediment  forever  inter- 
posed by  the  ritual  economy,  that  it  estranged  the  human 
from  the  divine,  the  vir  from  the  homo,  the  bride  from  the 
bridegroom,  or  perpetually  postponed  their  nuptials.  That 
economy  formally  authenticated  the  subjective  or  phenomenal 
disagreement  of  the  homo  and  the  vir,  of  the  cosmical  and 
tht^  domestic  element  in  consciousness,  and  this  was  all  it 
did  ;  for  it  lisped  no  word,  except  symbolically,  of  their 
prospective  objective  and  real  unity.  It  exhibits  the  vir  or 
specific  element  in  consciousness  (represented  by  the  jew), 
blindly  seeking  to  coerce  the  homo,  or  generic  masculine  element 
(represented  by  the  gentile),  into  its  bondage,  instead  of  irresist- 
ibly attracting  its  love  and  homage  by  every  graceful,  tender, 
endearing  art.  In  other  words,  religion  in  its  literal  form  is  an 
extremely  ascetic  maiden,  organizing  a  passionate  warfare  be- 
tween our  physical  and  our  moral  interests,  between  the  element 
of  fate  or  necessity  and  the  element  of  freedom  in  our  nature,  or 
suspending  our  eternal  beatitude  upon  the  degree  in  which  we 
have  previously  subjugated  our  flesh  to  our  spirit,  our  bodies  to 
our  souls.*  Whereas  the  true  tie  between  flesh  and  spirit,  as 

inmost  pride  of  the  latter ;  how  it  soothes  his  self-love  to  be  thus  singled  out  from 
other  men,  and  served  without  reference  to  his  human  or  social,  but  only  to  his 
absolute  or  selfish,  worth.  Thus  the  dog  does  not  by  any  means  love  and  serve 
its  master  because  the  latter  is  so  far  man,  but  only  because  he  is  so  far  dog. 
Take  a  man  who  has  been  spiritually  cultivated  out  of  his  aboriginal  cynicism  — 
or  his  merely  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  consciousness,  and  no  dog  will  be 
found  attaching  itself  to  him ;  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  will  not  find  enough 
of  the  canine  quality  remaining  in  such  a  master  to  foster  and  reward  its  h^ach- 
ment. 
*  The  Jewish  law  was  admirably  contrived  accordingly,  by  its  peculiar  atoning 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  Ill 

avouched  by  religion  in  its  living  or  fulfilled  form,  is  a  marriage 
tie,  which  is  one  of  essential  freedom  on  both  sides,  owning  no 
obligation  but  the  spontaneous  consent  of  the  parties,  and  dis- 
owning force  as  intensely  impertinent  on  either  side.  How  get 
over  this  impediment  then,  so  as  at  last  to  reconcile  truth  and  fact, 
hitherto  so  utterly  irreconcilable,  and  bring  creator  and  creature, 
infinite  and  finite,  into  conscious  unity  ? 

Evidently  only  by  the  decease  of  man's  ritual  conscience  to- 
wards God,  and  its  resurrection  in  real  or  living  form ;  that  is, 
by  revolutionizing  his  consciousness  to  such  an  extent  as  that 
what  has  hitherto  claimed  the  first  place  in  it,  as  appearing  to  be 
properly  objective,  or  infinite  and  divine  (namely,  the  external 
or  generic  element,  the  macrocosm,  or  homo),  shall  henceforth 
take  the  last  place,  and  confess  itself  altogether  subjective  or 
finite  and  human :  while  what  has  hitherto  been  accorded  only 
the  last  place,  as  appearing  strictly  subjective  or  human  and 
finite  (namely,  the  internal  or  specific  element,  the  microcosm, 
or  vir),  shall  henceforth  claim  the  first  place  in  it,  arid  avouch 
itself  altogether  objective,  or  divine  and  infinite  :  the  indispen- 
sable pivot  of  this  great  historic  revolution  being,  according  to 
Swedenborg,  the  life,  death,  and  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ. 

Let  me  briefly  but  clearly  indicate  the  leading  intellectual 
grounds  of  this  necessity. 


XVIII. 

There  is  no  such  thing  possible  on  Swedenborg's  intellectual 
principles  as  miracle,  in  the  conventional  sense  of  that  word  ;  that 
is,  no  such  thing  as  an  outside  divine  interference  with  the  order 
of  nature :  because  nature,  which  exists  only  as  an  implication 
of  man,  affords  but  an  inverse  witness  of  God ;  such  a  witness 

ordinances  and  its  perpetual  implication  of  personal  uncleanness  in  its  votary,  to 
suggest  to  every  one  of  the  least  spiritual  insight  how  futile  this  moral  aspiration 
on  our  part  is,  since  it  is  invariably  energized  by  a  carnal  spirit,  or  is  all  the  while 
pursuing  really  fleshly  ends  by  apparently  ascetic  methods.  This  being  the  exact 
inward  condition  of  the  Jewish  church  (and  that  church  represents  the  distinctively 
religious  conscience  of  man  everywhere)  —  namely,  that  its  zeal  for  sound  morality 
was  a  mere  cloak  to  its  real  unconscious  immersion  in  all  manner  of  carnal  cupidity 
and  uncleanness — it  is  not  surprising  that  it  outwardly  at  last,  or  corresponden- 
tially,  fell  under  the  roman  yoke,  which  symbolizes  the  unbridled  worldliness  or 
ambition  of  the  human  bosom. 


112  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

as  restricts  his  direct  presence  and  activity  to  the  dimensions  of 
moral  or  distinctively  human  form.  The  birth  of  Christ,  for 
example,  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  involves  a  departure  from 
the  seeming  order  of  nature,  has  always  been  reckoned  an  essen- 
tially disorderly  event,  complicating  the  even  tenor  of  existence 
by  an  outside  or  personal  divine  interference.  It  was  a  new 
thing  under  the  sun,  and  as  no  one  understood  the  grounds  of  it, 
or  had  the  least  intelligent  perception  of  nature's  being  a  mere 
mask  of  God's  creative  presence  and  power  exclusively  in 
man,  the  event  which  came  especially  charged  with  the  revela- 
tion of  that  truth  has  remained,  intellectually  speaking,  almost 
wholly  inert  and  inoperative  down  to  Swedenborg's  day,  if 
indeed  it  has  not  been  usually  interpreted  in  a  sense  exactly 
contrary  to  the  truth.  Swedenborg  regards  it  on  the  other 
hand  as  the  supremely  normal  event  of  history,  the  only  posi- 
tive revelation  of  law  that  ever  took  place,  law  infinite  and  eter- 
nal, or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  creative ;  the  orbit  of  the  law 
being  for  this  very  reason  so  vast  and  comprehensive  as  to 
defy  scientific  calculation,  and  adjourn  its  rational  recognition  to 
that  enlargement  and  renovation  of  the  common  mind  of  the 
race  which  is  coincident  with  our  perfected  social  evolution. 
The  event,  though  habitually  ascribed  to  supernatural  inter- 
ference, if  not  indeed  to  influences  contrary  to  nature,  was 
in  truth  the  spontaneous  flowering  of  nature  ;  only  of  nature 
in  a  sense  so  consummate,  in  a  sense  so  grand  and  universal, 
as  to  be  utterly  beyond  the  ken  either  of  a  superstitious  faith, 
or  a  sensuous  science,  and  as  to  impress  the  votaries  of  both 
alike,  consequently,  as  the  realm  of  the  vague,  the  unin- 
telligible, the  miraculous.  For  this  great  truth  of  the  incar- 
nation brings  the  spiritual  univers^  itself  within  the  realm  of 
nature,  i.  e.  nature  elevated  to  human  or  moral  form,  since  it 
proves  our  highest  inward  possibilities  to  be  rigidly  conditioned 
upon  the  due  and  orderly  satisfaction  of  our  humblest  outward 
necessities.  It  in  fact  turns  angel  and  seraph  —  nay,  the  infi- 
nite majesty  itself — from  the  ineffable  supreme  voluptuaries  we 
have  hitherto  tacitly  reckoned  them  to  be,  into  the  cheerful, 
untiring,  undaunted  missionaries  of  every  lowliest  human  want, 
and  irresistibly  invokes,  therefore,  a  faith  and  a  science  whose 
past  piddling  dissensions  will  all  be  forgotten  erelong  in  the 
access  of  a  regenerate  spiritual  unity. 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBOKG.  113 

The  creative  law,  as  we  have  already  abundantly  seen,  is  that 
our  subjective  or  natural  identity,  no  less  than  our  objective  or 
spiritual  individuality,  is  a  strict  divine  communication  to  us ; 
and  that  without  this  incidental  gift  indeed  the  grander  spirit- 
ual gift  could  never  be  secure  to  us,  would  be  simply  nugatory 
in  fact.  That  is  to  say,  we  must  sensibly  exist  in  ourselves,  or 
enjoy  phenomenal  self-consciousness,  before  we  can  pretend  act- 
ually to  image  the  divine  perfection  ;  for  that  perfection,  being 
spiritual  or  living,  requires  to  be  imaged  in  what  seems,  but  only 
seems,  to  have  life  in  itself.  Of  course,  life  cannot  image  itself 
in  life  (for  life  is  life),  but  only  in  death,  i.  e.  in  what  out- 
wardly appears  but  inwardly  is  not.  Besides,  if  we  really  should 
have  life  in  ourselves,  we  should  be  uncreated ;  and  to  be  un- 
created, would  require  us  to  be  without  selfhood,  for  selfhood 
means  limitation,  means  the  condition  of  a  subject  in  relation  to 
its  own  nature ;  that  is,  a  purely  conscious  or  composite  style  of 
existence,  whose  unity  consequently  is  not  in  itself,  but  is 
essentially  referable  to  a  higher  source.  But,  although  we 
are  really  devoid  of  being,  we  must  nevertheless  seem  to  our- 
selves absolutely  to  be,  or  else  we  shall  have  neither  sense  nor 
understanding,  neither  affection  nor  thought,  nor  any  other 
attribute  whereupon  the  truth  of  our  existence  may  be  ground- 
ed. If  we  thus  unmistakably  appear  to  ourselves  to  be,  or 
possess  moral  consciousness,  we  have  in  that  fact  a  basis  for 
any  amount  of  subsequent  divine  culture  or  discipline,  whereby 
we  may  be  gradually  educated  out  of 'finite  into  infinite  knowl- 
edge ;  gradually  elevated  out  of  subjective  or  phenomenal  exist- 
ence into  objective  or  real  being ;  gradually  built  up  in  fine 
out  of  the  mere  negative  imagery  of  God,  which  we  present  by 
nature,  into  positive  likenesses  of  his  immortal  spiritual  perfec- 
tion. 

But  let  us  not  be  duped  by  our  own  terms.  When,  for  ex- 
ample, we  say  that  God,  and  God  alone,  gives  us  selfhood,  that 
is,  natural  or  subjective  identity,  it  is  obvious  that  we  use  lan- 
guage suggested  by  material  analogies  ;  and  we  must  not  allow 
any  mere  literal  images  of  the  truth  to  control,  and  so  obscure, 
our  perception  of  the  spiritual  reality.  God  does  not  give  us 
selfhood  in  any  outward  manner,  as  I  give  a  gift  to  my  child  ; 
for  that  would  require  us  to  exist  before  we  were  in  existence, 
8 


114  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

or  to  be  on  hand  to  receive  our  selfhood,  before  selfhood  could 
be  given  to  us.  There  is,  and  indeed  can  be,  no  proportion  be- 
tween God's  giving  and  ours,  inasmuch  as  he  gives  infinitely, 
i.  e.  gives  himself;  and  we  give  finitely,  i.  e.  do  not  give  our- 
selves, but  only  what  we  have  over  and  above  ourselves,  name- 
ly, our  superfluity.  In  a  word,  God  is  a  creator,  who  gives  sub- 
jective or  conscious  life  to  the  work  of  his  hands  ;  while  man  is  at 
most  a  maker,  who  gives  mere  objective  or  unconscious  existence 
to  the  conceptions  of  his  genius.  Let  us  beware,  then,  of  reflec- 
tively picturing  the  creative  procedure,  in  giving  us  selfhood  or 
identity,  as  by  any  means  an  outward,  personal,  or  moral  act. 
In  order  to  allow  it  to  be  that,  we  should  be  obliged,  as  I  have 
just  said,  subjectively  to  antedate  our  own  subjectivity.  No, 
the  creative  throe  is  no  mere  rational  adaptation  of  means  to 
ends,  like  our  highest  activity  ;  much  less,'is  it  any  act  of  simple 
will  or  caprice,  like  that  of  some  flashy  conjurer  or  magician, 
who  would  set  off  his  own  vain  prowess  by  appearing  to  bring 
something  out  of  nothing,  or  giving  what  is  impossible  a  faint 
semblance  of  probability.  It  is  not  an  act  at  all  in  the  strict 
sense  of  that  word,  as  being  a  something  past  and  over,  a  mere 
deed  of  power  begun  and  ended  in  space  and  time.  For  space 
and  time  are  judgments  of  the  finite  intelligence  exclusively ; 
and  creation  is  never  done  and  never  past,  but  is  renewed  every 
moment,  being  instinct  with  and  inseparable  from  the  inmost 
love  and  life  of  God.  It  is  what  Swedenborg  calls  the  perpetual 
existere  of  the  divine  esse;  that  is  to  say,  a  most  sincere,  spon- 
taneous, irresistible  going-forth  of  the  creative  love  in  every 
method  of  formative  wisdom  —  the  creature  himself  being  the 
real  and  inexpugnable  voucher  of  that  wisdom.  No  doubt  the 
creature,  misled  by  his  senses  or  subjective  consciousness,  sepa- 
rates himself  to  his  own  immature  thought  in  a  very  silly  con- 
ceited way  from  the  creator,  and  imagines  himself  when  once 
created,  or  consciously  afloat,  to  exist  ever  after  on  his  own  bot- 
tom, on  his  own  independent  or  absolute  merits.  But  this  is  a 
mere  fantasy  of  our  servile  or  finite  understanding,  the  truth  of 
the  case  being  all  the  while  that  our  selfhood,  apparently  so  ab- 
solute, is  a  mere  semblance  or  shadow  of  which  the  lord  or 
divine  natural  man  is  the  sole  substance  or  reality. 

This  is  what  creation  means  to  Swedenbonr.     It  means  that 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  115 

our  conscious  or  subjective  life  is  but  an  arrest  and  appropriation 
to  ourselves  of  the  objective  or  unconscious  life  we  have  in  God. 
It  means,  in  fine,  that  God,  and  God  alone,  lives  in  us,  when  most 
we  appear  to  have  life  in  ourselves  ;  whence  it  becomes  instantly 
evident  that  space  and  time,  or  nature  and  history,  have  abso- 
lutely nothing  whatever  to  do  with  creation  in  its  objective 
aspect,  or  as  it  exists  to  the  divine  mind,  but  only  in  its  subjec- 
tive aspect,  or  as  it  exists  to  our  infirm  thought.  They  belong 
to  it,  not  as  a  result,  but  as  a  process.  They  are  not  laws  of  real 
or  spiritual  being,  but  only  of  phenomenal  or  conscious  exist- 
ence, and  characterize  creation  therefore,  not  as  it  appears  to 
instructed,  but  only  to  uninstructed  thought.  They  have  but  a 
representative  function  at  most,  as  symbolizing  to  the  created 
intelligence  laws  of  spiritual  life  and  action,  which  must  other- 
wise have  remained  forever  incognizable  and  inconceivable  to  it. 
They  are  not  the  true  or  spiritual  creation  but  a  rigid  corre- 
spondence or  reflection  of  it  to  a  finite  or  sensibly-organized 
intelligence,  whereby  the  creator  in  methods  perfectly  level  to 
the  created  apprehension,  becomes  able  fully  to  reveal  himself  to 
every  one  who  is  inwardly  disposed  to  be  enlightened  in  divine 
knowledge. 

Let  the  reader  ponder  what  is  here  said.  This  visible  uni- 
verse is  by  no  means  the  true  or  spiritual  creation,  but  only  and 
at  best  a  lively  image  or  correspondence  of  it  to  a  sensibly-organ- 
ized intelligence.  The  spiritual  creation  is  not  a  work  of  God 
begun  and  accomplished  in  space  and  time.  It  is  an  infinite  and 
eternal  work,  disclosing  itself  in  space  and  time,  or  nature  and 
history,  without  doubt,  but  deriving  all  its  form  and  substance 
from  the  immediate  divine  presence  and  activity.  The  truth  of 
creation  spiritually  regarded  is  that  of  the  lord  or  essential 
divine  humanity,  which  means  the  union  of  God  and  man,  crea- 
tor and  creature,  in  first  principles,  that  is,  in  affection  and 
thought ;  so  as  that  no  intelligent  angel  or  spirit  shall  ever  doubt 
for  a  moment,  that  however  much  his  good  and  his  truth  may 
seem  to  be  his  own  they  are  nevertheless  all  the  while  the  lord 
alone  in  him.  It  is  this  that  makes  creation  so  inglorious  an 

CJ 

attribute  of  the  divine  sovereignty,  compared  with  that  of 
redemption.  For  creation  leaves  the  creature  at  his  highest  a 
merely  natural  existence  —  without  personality  —  consequently 


116  THE   SECKET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

without  any  faculty  of  spiritual  insight  or  sympathetic  reaction 
towards  his  creator,  and  it  leaves  the  creator  accordingly  and  at 
best  a  sort  of  glorified  clock-maker,  intent  no  doubt  upon  mech- 
anizing his  creature  to  the  best  available  issues,  but  utterly 
indifferent  to  his  spiritual  fellowship  and  co-operation,  utterly 
insensible  to  the  awful  wants  of  his  soul.  One  would  gladly  be 
exiled  from  such  an  Eden  to  a  land  producing  only  thorns  and 
thistles,  or  where  one  should  earn  one's  bread  at  the  cost  of  his 
proper  toil  and  sweat ;  for  it  would  be  bread  honestly  earned  at 
all  events,  and  would  make  life  for  the  first  time  seem  life  in 
contrast  with  one's  past  beggarly  existence.  Swedenborg  accord- 
ingly makes  creation  to  pivot  exclusively  upon  redemption,  that 
is,  upon  a  work  of  infinite  and  eternal  mercy  accomplished  in 
the  nature  of  the  creature,  or  outside  of  his  personal  conscious- 
ness, whereby  he  becomes  divorced  from  his  native  imbecility 
and  impotence  as  a  created  being,  and  clothed  upon  with  all 
divine  power,  innocence,  and  peace.  Hence  the  universe  of 
nature,  and  hence  man  its  finished  flower  and  fruit,  whose 
individuality  alone  is  commensurate  with  such  universality  ;  for 
he,  although  born  in  utter  want  and  nakedness,  and  bred  in 
weakness  and  infamy,  has  the  task  and  has  the  power  divinely 
given  him  of  subduing  all  nature  to  himself,  and  so  leading  it 
back  to  him  from  whom  it  originally  comes. 

Thus  Swedenborg  disconcerts  our  existing  religious  and  scien- 
tific empiricism,  by  vacating  the  sole  intellectual  ground  or  basis 
it  possesses  in  the  assumed  integrity  of  nature,  or  the  imputation 
of  an  objective  reality  to  space  and  time.  The  intellectual  fal- 
lacy which  is  common  to  the  rival  parties,  and  which  alone  in- 
deed makes  their  rivalry  possible,  is,  that  a  certain  indisputable 
work  of  God  exists  which  we  call  nature.  If  it  were  not  so, 
the  sceptic  would  never  complain  of  the  devotee  for  alleging 
another  work  of  God,  which  he  calls  supernatural  or  miraculous 
as  enforcing  a  temporary  suspension  of  nature's  laws.  The 
sceptic  and  the  devotee  perfectly  agree  that  nature  is  a  positive 
achievement  of  God.  But  the  former  holds  that  it  is  his  only 
achievement ;  while  the  latter  maintains  that  a  subsequent  work 
takes  place,  which  effectually  revokes  or  supersedes  the  former 
one,  and  puts  our  knowledge  of  God  consequently  upon  a  much 
more  authentic  footing.  Hence  their  interminable  conflict,  the 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  117 

noise  of  which  Swedenborg  instantly  silences  by  denying  their 
common  premise  ;  or  affirming  that  nature  is  no  objective,  but  a 
purely  subjective  work  of  God,  in  the  interest  exclusively  of 
man's  spiritual  evolution  in  harmony  with  the  creative  perfection. 
Nature  serves,  according  to  Swedenborg,  and  serves  only  to 
give  God's  true  creature,  which  is  man,  a  constitutional  projec- 
tion from  his  creative  source,  or  a  basis  of  self-consciousness, 
whereupon  he  may  subsequently  rise  to  any  height  which  seems 
to  himself  good  of  interior  communion  or  fellowship  with  infi- 
nite goodness  and  truth. 

It  is  not  difficult  accordingly  to  hear  Swedenborg  saying  in 
effect  to  both  of  these  disputants  :  "  The  matter  of  your  dispute 
is  essentially  trivial,  or  impertinent  to  philosophy,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  it  has  no  ground  in  objective  reality,  but  only  in 
your  own  subjective  ignorance  and  fantasy.  You,  Mr.  Mansel, 
are  interested,  for  what  doubtless  seem  to  you  good  theologic 
reasons,  in  maintaining  a  possible  divorce  or  disproportion  be- 
tween our  knowledge  and  our  belief;  and  you,  Mr.  Mill,  for 
what  seem  to  you  equally  good  scientific  reasons,  are  inter- 
ested in  the  denial  of  that  possibility.  But  your  quarrel  could 
never  have  arisen  unless  you  both  alike  held,  to  begin  with,  that 
our  knowledge  is  essentially  objective,  and  not  subjective  ;  that  it 
is  a  knowledge  of  what  really  or  absolutely  z's,  and  not  alone  of 
what  actually  or  contingently  exists,  i.  e.  appears  to  be.  Now, 
philosophy  disowns  and  derides  this  pretension.  Philosophy 
declares  that  being  (which  is  real  existence)  is  spiritual,  and 
hence  can  never  be  sensibly,  but  only  inwardly  or  livingly  dis- 
cerned —  can  never  be  known  directly,  or  as  it  is  in  itself,  but 
only  as  it  is  reproduced  in  what  is  not  itself;  so  that  existence 
(which  is  phenomenal  being)  confesses  itself  a  sheerly  reflex 
condition  of  things,  and  is  therefore  sure  to  turn  the  intellect  upside 
down  which  regards  it  as  a  direct  or  positive  exhibition  of  truth. 
Thus  what  both  of  you  gentlemen  subjectively  know  —  whai 
your  senses  reveal  to  you  jointly  — is,  according  to  philosophy, 
no  divine  reality,  but  only  the  semblance  of  such  reality  to  a 
wholly  undivine — i.  e.  created  —  intelligence.  How  absurd 
then  for  either  of  you  to  attempt  philosophizing  upon  that  shallow 
provisional  basis  of  knowledge !  What  possible  interest  can 
philosophy  feel,  Mr.  Mansel,  in  your  devout  assurance  of  faith  ? 


118  THE   SECEET   OF   SWEDENBOKG. 

What  greater  interest  can  it  pretend  to  take,  Mr.  Mill,  in  your 
sceptical  plea  of  ignorance  ?  They  are  both  alike  worthless  to 
a  philosophic  regard,  because  they  proceed  upon  the  assumption 
that  our  beliefs  and  our  doubts,  our  knowledge  and  our  igno- 
rance, are  exercised  upon  realities,  whereas  they  have  to  do  only 
with  the  shadows  of  reality.  They  both  alike  assume  that 
nature  is  not  merely  a  sensible  but  a  rational  reality,  whereas  it 
is  the  mere  negative  or  inverse  attestation  of  such  reality. 
What  Mr.  Mansel  specifically  believes  or  doubts  in  any  case  — 
what  Mr.  Mill  specifically  knows  or  ignores  in  like  case  —  is 
never  the  objective  reality  but  only  the  subjective  show  of 
things.  Of  what  vital  moment  to  philosophy  therefore  is  the 
vaunted  faith  of  the  one,  or  the  vaunted  science  of  the  other  ? 
The  things  they  are  severally  exercised  upon,  nature  and  his- 
tory, belong  exclusively  to  the  phenomenal  realm,  never  for  a 
moment  exceed  the  compass  of  the  subjective  understanding, 
and  hence  are  destitute  of  the  least  objective  significance.  To 
go  into  a  passion  over  them  accordingly  —  above  all,  to  assume 
a  philosophic  strut  on  one  side  and  the  other,  as  if  the  business 
of  the  universe  had  been  at  last  completely  settled  —  is  about 
as  absurd  as  it  would  be  for  two  children  who,  looking  by  turns 
into  a  mirror,  and  seeing  each  a  different  face  of  reality  pro- 
jected, should  thereupon  fall  foul  of  each  other,  and  vituperate 
each  the  other's  innocent  eyes,  because  they  could  not  see  the 
same  face.  God  forbid  that  I  should  feel  the  least  personal 
complacency  in  your  shortcomings  to  philosophy  !  For  I  have 
never  for  an  instant  dissembled  the  fact,  that  all  my  own  knowl- 
edge upon  the  subject  is  owing  to  no  superior  intellectual  acumen 
on  my  part,  but  wholly  to  sensible  angelic  mediation.  But  I 
maintain  that  this  knowledge,  how  little  soever  it  may  flatter 
one's  pride  of  independence,  gives  to  every  one  that  possesses  it 
a  great  intellectual  advantage  over  those  who  do  not,  because  in 
the  first  place  it  confronts  one  with  real,  and  so  divorces  him 
from  merely  apparitional  existences  :  and  in  the  second,  it  puts 
an  end  to  controversy,  or  converts  that  honest  human  force  in 
us  which  has  been  hitherto  squandered  in  mere  idle  blood- 
shed into  a  force  of  endless  spiritual  nourishment  and  edifica- 
tion." 

Such  is  a  perfectly  fair  report  of  Swedenborg's  attitude   to- 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG  119 

wards  our  existing  intellectual  dissensions.  I  freely  admit,  at  the 
same  time,  that  nothing  can  be  more  dispiriting  than  this  report 
to  the  mind  which  craves  above  all  things  some  authoritative 
adjustment  of  these  dissensions,  in  "  giving  reason,"  as  the 
French  say,  to  one  side  or  the  other.  I  cannot  find  a  word  of 
soothing  addressed  to  that  pusillanimous  expectation  in  all  Swe- 
denborg's  books,  for  he  denies  reason  to  both  sides  alike.  In  fact 
I  seriously  warn  every  one  away  from  these  books,  whose  mind 
preserves  any  considerable  leaven  of  respect  for  "  authority  "  of 
any  sort,  divine  or  human,  religious  or  scientific ;  i.  e.  who  is 
not  prepared  to  render  a  supreme  obedience  to  his  own  convic- 
tions of  goodness  and  truth  whithersoever  they  lead  him,  and 
however  much  our  best  authenticated  men  of  faith  and  men  of 
science  may  refuse  him  countenance.  We  have  indeed  in  the 
extraordinary  lore  with  which  Swedenborg's  books  make  us  fa- 
miliar our  first  faint  presentiment  of  an  entirely  new  or  regen- 
erate intellectual  existence  —  an  existence  whose  fixed  earth,  or 
immovable  foundations,  is  laid  exclusively  in  the  ten  command- 
ments, and  whose  free  heaven,  or  infinite  expanse,  is  made  up  of 
love  divine  and  human,  universal  and  particular.  It  is  a  world 
whose  deepest  night  is  our  present  intellectual  day,  whose 
remotest  west  is  our  kindling  east,  whose  frostiest  winter  is  our 
most  blooming  summer,  the  obvious  solution  of  the  enigma 
being,  that  our  current  intellectual  life  proceeds  upon  the 
acknowledgment  of  nature  as  a  fixed  achievement  of  the  divine 
power,  while  these  books  represent  it  as  an  altogether  fluid  and 
obedient  medium  of  such  power.  Our  infallible  doctors  make 
nature  a  divine  terminus,  whereas  Swedenborg  makes  it  at  most 
a  starting-point  of  the  creative  energy.  Our  old  intellect  is 
fashioned  upon  a  conception  of  nature,  which  reports  her  organ- 
izing a  real  or  essential  discrepancy  between  creator  and  crea- 
ture. The  new  intellect  beholds  in  nature  on  the  contrary  a 
real  or  essential  marriage  of  the  divine  and  human,  and  admits 
only  a  contingent  or  logical  divorce.  In  short,  while  the  old 
world  regards  nature  as  the  realm  exclusively  of  finite  or  created 
existence,  and  hence  at  best  of  fossilized  or  inactive  divinity,  the 
world  to  come,  of  which  we  catch  in  Swedenborg's  books  the 
tenderest  vernal  breath  as  it  were,  is  built  upon  the  recognition 
of  the  spiritual  only  in  the  natural,  of  the  divine  only  in  the 


120  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

human  ;  and  hence  exhibits  the  creature  instinct  and  alive  with 
the  creative  personality.* 

XIX. 

It  thus  appears  that  Mr.  Mansel  and  Mr.  Mill  cannot  help 
differing  egregiously  from  Swedenborg  in  the  estimate  they 
make  of  Christ's  nativity,  inasmuch  as  they  both  alike  look 
upon  nature  as  an  absolutely  fixed  existence,  as  an  essentially 
finite  quantity,  wholly  incapable  of  any  adjustment  or  approx- 
imation to  the  infinite  ;  while  Swedenborg  regards  it  as  an  essen- 
tially indeterminate  quantity,  or  indefinite  existence,  being  in 
itself  neither  infinite  nor  finite,  but  the  exact  neutrality  or  indif- 
ference of  the  two,  and  standing  therefore  in  equal  and  unforced 
proximity  to  either  interest.  Both  Mr.  Mansel  and  Mr.  Mill 
conceive  nature  herself —  the  cosmos  —  whatever  they  may 
make  of  her  shifting  specific  forms,  to  be  her  own  end,  to  exist 
upon  her  own  absolute  basis,  as  exhibiting  no  normal  subser- 
viency to  a  distinctly  superior  style  of  life.  With  Swedenborg, 
on  the  other  hand,  nature  is  only  an  outward  image  or  show,  only 
a  sensuous  mask,  of  a  living  decease,  so  to  speak — an  inward 
obscuration  and  humiliation  —  a  spiritual  imprisonment  and  coer- 
cion —  which  the  creative  love  undergoes  in  endowing  its  true 
creature,  man,  with  subjective  identity,  or  valid  self-conscious- 
ness. For  selfhood,  or  moral  life,  would  be  simply  unattainable 
and  indeed  inconceivable  to  us,  without  a  quasi  natural  basis,  or 
physical  background,  to  give  it  conscious  relief;  without  a 
something  properly  objective  to  it,  interposing  between  it  and 
the  creator,  and  tempering  his  presence  and  activity  in  a  way 
rationally  to  authenticate  all  its  instincts  of  freedom  and  power ;  so 
that  the  creative  love,  if  it  would  endow  us  with  moral  sub- 
jectivity as  a  basis  of  our  spiritual  evolution,  or  objectivity  to 
itself,  is  bound  to  immerse  itself  in  mere  mineral,  vegetable,  and 
animal  conditions,  is  bound  eternally  to  identify  itself  in  all  sub- 
jective regards  with  cosmical  law  and  order. 

The  consequence  of  so  fundamental  a  discrepancy,  in  their 
intellectual  point  of  view,  between  Swedenborg  of  the  one  part 
and  Mr.  Mansel  and  Mr.  Mill  of  the  other,  is  that  when  nature 

*  See  Appendix,  note  E. 


THE  SECEET  OF  SWEDENBORG.  121 

is  finally  called  upon  to  give  up  the  ghost,  confess  her  secret,  and 
avouch  the  latent  infinitude  which  sanctifies  her  most  finite 
form,  neither  Mr.  Mansel  nor  Mr.  Mill  is  at  all  rationally 
equipped  for  the  catastrophe;  the  one  feeling  himself  com- 
pelled to  pronounce  it  miraculous  or  supernatural,  the  other  to 
pronounce  it  an  illusion  or  imposture;  while  Swedenborg,  on 
the  contrary,  declares  that  this  so-called  catastrophe  is  precisely 
nature's  normal  business ;  that  her  only  true  and  honest  func- 
tion has  ever  been  to  subserve  revelation  ;  that  she  actually  exists 
db  initio,  and  has  always  been  providentially  graduated,  shaped, 
and  guided  to  that  supreme  issue :  so  that  all  our  hot  disputes  as 
to  whether  things  abstractly  are  or  are-not,  turn  out  to  be  of  no 
philosophic  account  as  bearing  upon  the  doctrine  of  being,  or 
determining  what  really  is,  but  at  most  of  a  scientific  moment, 
as  bearing  upon  the  doctrine  of  knowing,  or  determining  what 
actually  appears.  Swedenborg  says  in  effect  to  dogmatist  and 
sceptic  alike  :  "  You  have  neither  of  you  the  least  right  to  for- 
mulate an  ontological  judgment,  until  you  shall  have  ceased, 
first  of  all,  looking  upon  nature  and  history  as  finalities,  and 
come  to  regard  them  as  an  abject  correspondence  or  servile 
imagery  of  spiritual  truth.  It  is  simply  ludicrous  to  hear  one  of 
you  gravely  pronouncing  a  certain  historical  event  to  be  super- 
natural,  and  the  other  as  gravely  pronouncing  it  ^ranatural, 
when  it  is  palpable  to  me  that  neither  one  nor  the  other  has  the 
faintest  suspicion  of  what  nature  herself  is.  You  have  neither 
of  you  ever  enjoyed  any  intellectual  insight  of  nature,  but  only 
and  at  most  a  sensible  contact  with  her.  Had  either  of  you  ever 
been  admitted  to  an  unreserved  intimacy  with  her,  or  an  intelli- 
gent acquaintance  with  the  heights  of  spiritual  being  whence 
alone  she  descends,  he  would  have  discovered  that  she  was  a 
real  existence,  a  fixed  quantity,  only  to  a  sensibly-organized  in- 
telligence, and  hence  that  nothing  can  be  more  preposterous  in 
the  eyes  of  philosophy  than  to  make  her  a  standard  of  truth, 
or  convert  her  from  an  abject  servant  into  the  controlling  mis- 
tress of  the  mind.  You  might  as  well  confound  brick-making 
with  architecture,  or  convert  the  moral  law  from  a  fixed  earthly 
root  of  human  culture  into  its  free  heavenly  fruit.  Nature 
and  history  are  not  objective,  but  exclusively  subjective,  di- 
vine experiences.  They  attest  not  the  creator's  infinitude  or 


122  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

perfection,  which  is  what  he  is  in  himself,  but  the  finiteness  or 
imperfection  he  necessarily  contracts  when  he  descends  to  the 
level  of  the  created  nature,  or  puts  on  the  creature's  lineaments. 
In  creation  he  is  utterly  subject  to  the  exigencies  of  our  finite 
consciousness,  so  that  there  is  no  possible  abyss  of  infamy 
through  which  his  patient  unsoiled  love  is  not  content  to  be 
dragged  by  us  ;  and  it  is  only  in  our  spiritual  redemption  that 
we  release  him  from  this  degrading  thraldom,  and  allow  him  to 
become  truly  and  intelligibly  objective  to  us.  It  is  very  childish 
in  us  accordingly  to  attempt  imprisoning  the  infinite  within  the 
finite,  instead  of  allowing  the  latter  freely  to  expand  to  the 
dimensions  of  the  former.  It  is  very  absurd,  in  other  words, 
for  us  to  insist  upon  interpreting  history  by  nature,  reason  by 
sense,  high  by  low,  and  not  contrariwise  ;  beginning  thereupon 
to  wrangle  about  what  is  or  is-not,  as  if  we  had  some  private 
access  to  divine  knowledge,  and  were  intellectually  independent 
of  the  great  light  of  revelation.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  you 
are  both  of  you  extremely  clever  men.  You  both  possess 
uncommon  ratiocinative  resources,  and  are  both  alike  capable 
consequently  of  making  white  seem  black,  or  black  white,  at 
your  pleasure.  This,  however,  is  no  help,  but  rather  a  hin- 
drance to  you  —  unless  indeed  you  distrust  your  own  plausible 
gifts  —  in  the  discernment  of  truth.  No  cordial,  disinterested 
lover  of  truth  can  long  endure  to  reason  about  it.  He  willingly 
affirms  or  denies  whatever  is  agreeable  or  repugnant  to  it ;  but 
he  would  be  very  sorry  rationally  to  enforce  its  acceptance  upon 
any  unwilling  mind. 

"  I  repeat,  then,  that  nature  has  not  the  least  claim  to  be  a 
direct  revelation  of  God,  any  more  than  the  body  has  to  be  a 
direct  revelation  of  the  soul,  or  the  cuticle,  which  invests  the 
body,  has  to  be  a  direct  revelation  of  its  interior  viscera.  The 
body  attests  the  soul  only  to  those  who  are  previously  convinced 
of  the  soul's  existence  ;  and  the  skin  illustrates  the  activity  of 
the  more  vital  organs  only  to  those  who  are  directly  acquainted 
with  these  latter.  So  nature  maybe  said  to  attest  and  illustrate 
the  creative  name  only  to  those  who  have  previously  become 
acquainted  with  it  in  history  or  man  ;  but  whatever  direct  infor- 
mation it  pretends  to  give  is  sure  to  be  misleading.  That  is  to 
say,  it  is  an  obedient  mirror  of  divine  revelation,  but  the  light 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  123 

which  illumines  it  in  that  case  is  not  supplied  by  itself,  but  ex- 
clusively by  a  reason  emancipated  from  sense.  You  have  neither 
of  you  consequently  the  least  warrant  to  dogmatize  positively 
or  negatively  upon  historic  problems  —  the  problems  of  our 
human  origin  and  destiny  —  until  you  have  ascertained  the 
relation  of  nature  to  history.  I  have  not  the  slightest  intention 
nor  desire  to  intimate  that  you  are  bound  to  accept  mine  or  any 
other  man's  view  of  that  relation.  But  I  do  say  without  any 
hesitation  that  unless  you  arrive  at  some  intellectual  conclusions 
upon  this  subject  —  unless  you  formulate  to  yourselves  some 
intellectual  doctrine  as  to  the  kind  of  tie  which  binds  nature  to 
spirit  —  you  are  both  alike  utterly  incompetent  to  say  what  is 
either  true  or  untrue  of  the  intercourse  between  God  and  man  ; 
both  alike  incompetent  in  fact  to  furnish  even  a  shrewd  guess  at 
the  solution  of  any  ontological  problem.  Before  you  can  be 
philosophically  qualified  in  this  direction,  you  must  have  defin- 
itively settled  it  to  your  own  mind :  whether  nature  is  an  objec- 
tive presentation  of  divine  truth  to  an  intelligence  capable  of 
directly  appreciating  such  truth  ;  or  whether  it  is  a  sheer  sub- 
jective abasement  and  humiliation  of  it  to  an  understanding 
infinitely  below  its  le?el,  and  sure  otherwise  to  remain  out  of  all 
acquaintance  and  sympathy  with  it.  'No  dodging  of  this  issue 
can  be  tolerated  for  a  moment  without  peril  to  your  philosophic 
souls.  You  are  bound  to  postpone  every  derivative  scientific 
inquiry  until  you  shall  have  first  of  all  decided  for  your- 
selves the  grand  original  problem  of  philosophy,  whether  na- 
ture is  an  absolute  or  purely  contingent  existence  ;  whether  it  is 
what  it  appears  to  be,  a  substantive  work  of  God  achieved  in 
space  and  time,  and  presenting  its  justification  therefore  on  its 
face  ;  or  whether  it  really  is  what  it  does  not  appear  to  be, 
namely,  a  mere  phenomenal  manifestation,  or  reverberation  to 
sense,  of  an  infinite  and  eternal  work  of  God  accomplishing  in 
the  spiritual  and  invisible  realm  of  the  human  mind,  the  realm  of 
man's  living  affection  and  thought." 

Thus  not  being  but  existence,  which  is  only  a  manifestation  of 
being,  is  Swedenborg's  conception  of  the  meaning  both  of 
nature  and  history  :  nature  expressing  the  subjective  aspect  of 
existence,  which  means  the  descent  of  the  creator  to  created 
form  ;  and  history  its  objective  aspect,  which  means  the  conse 


124  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

quent  gradual  ascent  of  the  creature  to  a  fellowship  with  the 
uncreated  perfection.  The  two  movements  are  hierarchically 
related  as  husband  and  wife  are  in  marriage,  where  force  is  seen 
endowing  weakness.  They  combine  to  constitute  creation 
according  to  a  law  of  definite  proportions,  as  hydrogen  and 
oxygen  combine  to  produce  water,  or  nitrogen  and  oxygen  to 
produce  atmospheric  air,  what  is  mere  quantity  in  the  one  freely 
deferring  to  what  is  quality  in  the  other.  Thus  what  is  greatest 
in  existence,  what  is  generic  or  universal,  in  short  what  is  prop- 
erly substantial,  gravitates  towards  what  is  least  in  existence, 
what  is  specific  or  individual,  what  in  short  is  strictly  formal ; 
and  this  in  its  turn  vigorously  reacts  to  that.  The  homo,  which 
is  the  fixed  or  cosmical  and  masculine  element  in  existence, 
yearns  towards  the  vir,  which  is  its  free  or  domestic  and  fem- 
inine element ;  while  the  vir  again  responsively  aspires  to  the 
homo,  aspires  to  bring  all  nature,  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal, 
into  its  embrace,  and  reproduce  it  in  every  form  of  its  own 
teeming  activity.  Thus  we  may  say  that  the  great  historic 
problem  —  the  problem  alike  of  our  earliest  religious  and  our 
latest  philosophic  culture  —  has  been  to  reconcile  nature  and 
man,  to  fuse  flesh  and  spirit,  to  wed  force  a'nd  freedom,  to  harmo- 
nize law  and  gospel,  to  marry  mechanism  and  morals,  in  short 
permanently  to  unite  the  indefinitely  great,  which  is  the  superb 
overbearing  cosmos,  with  the  indefinitely  small,  which  is  our 
humble  domestic  earth,  the  pleasant  house  of  our  abode,  that  so 
whatsoever  is  most  outward  or  public  and  profane  in  existence 
may  find  itself  authenticated  by  what  is  most  inward  or  private 
and  sacred ;  that  so  whatsoever  is  most  absolute  or  material,  and 
therefore  domineering  and  cruel  in  experience,  may  become  sanc- 
tified by  association  with  whatsoever  is  most  contingent,  most 
moral  or  free,  and  therefore  most  gracious,  pliable,  and  orderly. 
Such  is  the  tie  which  subsists  between  the  two  constitutive 
elements  of  creation,  —  a  strictly  conjugal  tie,  or  one  which  ex- 
hibits the  superior  and  creative  element  altogether  merging  and 
losing  itself  in  the  inferior  and  created  one.  Creation  is  mani- 
festly inconceivable  on  any  lower  terms.  For  if  the  infinite 
creative  substance  should  refuse  to  accommodate  itself  to  the 
finite  created  form,  the  creature  who  is  nothing  but  by  the 
creator  would  fail  to  appear,  would  remain  obstinately  non- 


THE   SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  125 

existent ;  just  as  air  or  water  would  fail  to  exist  or  appear  if 
their  constituent  elements  should  not  renounce  their  subjective 
differences,  in  order  to  become  objectively  fused  and  reproduced 
in  the  bosom  of  their  harmless  and  beautiful  offspring.  Water 
is  the  type  of  all  that  is  spiritually  pure  or  true.  It  is  the  soft 
motherly  womb,  formless  itself,  out  of  which  all  form  grows  and 
defines  itself.  And  nothing  is  so  wholesome  as  the  air  which 
typifies  the  invisible  divine  breath  or  spirit  by  which  we  live. 
It  is  the  warm  paternal  mantle  wrapped  about  us,  which  — 
colorless  itself — lets  in  infinite  color,  beauty,  and  distinction 
upon  everything  it  touches.  But  air  and  water  are  thus  gifted 
—  are  thus  pure  and  strong  and  generous,  thus  fluid,  searching, 
and  caressing,  in  a  word,  are  so  little  magisterial  and  so  exten- 
sively ministerial  to  existence  —  only  because  they  are  the  fruit 
of  a  strict  marriage  tie  between  two  forces,  which  in  themselves 
or  subjectively  are  so  frankly  antagonistic  as  to  be  mutually 
incompatible,  and  which  are  incapable  of  combining  therefore 
except  objectively  or  in  prolification,  that  is,  in  some  third  or 
neutral  quantity  which  effaces  every  vestige  of  their  intrinsic 
oppugnancy  in  its  own  concordant  and  unitary  bosom. 

So  is  it  precisely  with  creation.  In  order  to  claim  any  validity 
in  itself — in  order  to  exhibit  the  least  permanent  worth  or  char- 
acter—  creation  must  be  the  fruit  of  a  stringent  indissoluble 
marriage  between  its  infinite  and  finite  factors.  It  must  confess 
itself  a  perfect  reconciliation  in  objective  form  of  two  powers 
which  in  themselves,  or  subjectively,  are  as  reciprocally  opposed 
as  zenith  and  nadir,  good  and  evil,  light  and  dark,  heaven  and 
hell.  This  is  the  distinction  between  marriage  and  concubinage, 
that  the  one  tie  is  objective,  social,  productive,  while  the  other 
is  subjective,  selfish,  prodigal.  Concubinage  is  physical,  instinc- 
tual, compulsory,  having  purely  subjective  issues,  or  expressing 
mere  natural  want,  the  want  of  some  suitable  ministry  to  reflect 
one's  essential  mastery.  Marriage  is  moral,  voluntary,  free, 
claiming  distinctively  objective  sanctions,  or  expressing  the 
purely  spiritual  need  one  feels  to  supplement  a  feebler  existence 
with  his  own  force.  In  marriage  the  man  so  freely  makes  him- 
self over  to  the  woman,  so  cordially  endows  her  with  all  his 
substance,  as  to  make  a  spiritual  resurrection  or  glorification  for 
him  in  his  offspring  logically  inevitable.  Thus  it  is  the  essen- 


126  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

tially  objective  nature  of  marriage,  the  fact  that  the  parties  to  it 
are  utterly  disunited  in  themselves,  and  united  only  in  their  off- 
spring, which  makes  it  undefiled  and  honorable,  or  invests  it 
with  the  social  interest  and  prestige  that  distinguish  human  from 
brute  prolification.  And  it  is  the  essentially  subjective  nature 
of  concubinage,  the  fact  that  the  parties  to  it  are  one  not 
actively  or  in  prolification,  but  passively  or  in  themselves,  or 
that  they  contemplate  —  not  that  glorified  or  regenerate  social 
existence  to  which  marriage  partners  find  themselves  summoned 
in  the  person  of  their  offspring,  not  that  large  and  frank  and 
generous  commerce  with  each  other  in  all  humane  aspiration 
and  endeavor  to  which  the  interests  of  their  offspring  invite 
these  latter  —  but  a  mere  transient,  selfish,  and  mercenary 
traffic  in  personal  delights,  terminable  at  the  caprice  of  either 
party,  which  puts  an  indelible  stigma  upon  it.  It  would  be 
infinitely  discreditable  accordingly  to  the  two  factors  in  crea- 
tion, if  their  tie  were  anything  short  of  a  marriage  tie,  i.  e. 
if  it  did  not  claim  an  exclusively  social  sanction,  or  profess  to 
stand  only  in  that  conscious,  living  reconciliation  of  the  two 
otherwise  irreconcilable  natures  which  the  church  has  always 
prophesied,  but  which  is  spiritually  realized  only  in  the  grand 
practical  truth  of  "the  divine  NATURAL  humanity,"  or  the  ad- 
vent of  that  predestined  perfect  society,  fellowship,  equality  of 
men  in  heaven  and  on  earth,  which  alone  has  power  to  bring 
nature  and  spirit,  the  outward  and  inward,  the  universal  and 
particular,  the  cosmos  and  the  earth,  the  homo  and  the  vir,  the 
man  and  the  woman,  the  world  and  the  church,  into  living 
unison,  and  so  reduce  the  infinite  creative  majesty  into  the 
keenest,  most  sympathetic  fellowship,  into  the  active  efficient 
servitude,  of  every  humblest  organic  want  known  to  the  ex- 
perience of  the  meanest,  most  necessitous,  most  infamous  of 
created  bosoms.  Just  conceive  for  a  moment  that  creator  and 
creature,  instead  of  being  indissolubly  married  in  creation,  were 
bound  to  each  other  only  par  amours,  or  as  the  artist  is  bound  to 
his  work  ;  and  then  ask  yourself  what  would  be  the  practical 
result  to  creation.  Why,  I  need  hardly  say  that  spiritual  exist- 
ence would  instantly  declare  itself  an  impossible  conception,  for 
spiritual  existence  is  universally  conceded  to  stand  only  in  the 
union  of  the  divine  and  human  natures ;  but  I  must  say,  what 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  127 

«• 

is  not  so  obvious,  that  physical  and  moral  existence,  or  nature 
and  history,  would  in  that  case  also  disappear,  since  the  subjec- 
tive discrimination  of  these  things  has  always  been  a  mere  pro- 
visional necessity  of  their  eventual  objective  reunion  in  a  perfect 
society  or  brotherhood  of  men.  In  fact,  the  visible  creation 
would  at  once  collapse  from  the  living,  breathing,  organic  unity 
of  force  and  freedom,  of  genus  and  species,  of  law  and  order, 
which  constitutes  our  actual  cosmos,  into  a  lifeless  mush  or 
chaos  infinitely  below  anything  now  extant  even  in  mineral 
nature  outside  the  seething  bowels  of  JEtna  or  Vesuvius. 


XX. 

I  believe  that  I  have  now  to  some  extent  adequately  venti- 
lated the  philosophic  contents  of  the  Christian  revelation,  as 
these  are  either  directly  explicated  or  indirectly  implicated  in 
Swedenborg's  books.  I  have  no  idea  that  in  doing  so  I  have 
entirely  succeeded  in  removing  the  scruples  of  any  one  who  has 
been  hitherto  prejudiced  against  the  Christian  doctrine,  on  the 
score  of  its  proffering  some  apparent  affront  to  what  his  heart 
pronounces  good.  What  we  all  of  us  need  —  in  order  to  have 
every  prejudice  and  misconception  thus  honestly  motived  effectu- 
ally met  —  is  not  a  more  conclusive  argumentation  on  the  part 
of  any  one  else,  but  a  larger  intellectual  insight  on  our  own 
part ;  and  this  will  not  fail  to  be  forthcoming  in  due  season. 
But  I  hope  that  I  have  nevertheless  done  something  to  help  the 
thought  of  those  who,  being  heartily  disposed  to  entertain  the 
Christian  verity  —  which  is  the  truth  of  Christ's  literal  divinity, 
or  his  flesh-and-blood  resurrection  from  death  —  are  yet  more 
or  less  unaware  how  profoundly  rooted  it  is  in  the  intellect.  No 
truly  philosophic  objection  can  be  intelligently  urged  against  it, 
but  at  most  a  scientific  one.  The  only  plausible  weapons  forged 
against  it  have  always  been  supplied  by  the  arsenal  of  sense,  not 
by  that  of  the  reason.  Nothing  indeed  can  be  more  absurd  to 
sense  —  or  the  imagination  which  looks  upon  nature  not  as  a 
mere  implication  of  moral  existence,  but  as  existing  in  itself  or 
absolutely  —  than  the  pretension  of  a  person  so  genuinely  un- 
ostentatious as  the  Christ  to  constitute  the  only  true  and  suffi- 
cent  revelation  of  the  divine  name.  And  every  one  accordingly 


128  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

whose  reason  is  controlled  by  sense,  or  who  refuses  to  see  in 
nature  a  mere  echo  or  correspondence  of  the  spiritual  creation, 
the  creation  which  falls  exclusively  within  or  above  —  not  with 
out  or  below  —  the  realm  of  consciousness,  will  be  sure  to  reject 
his  pretension  :  the  obvious  philosophy  of  the  fact  being  that 
sense  necessarily  views  nature  as  the  only  just  measure  of  the 
creative  perfection,  and  regards  every  one  therefore  who  is  alto- 
gether devoid  of  native  pomp  or  sumptuosity —  who  has  no 
personal  grace  nor  comeliness,  no  inheritance,  no  learning,  no 
wit,  no  skill,  no  genius,  no  natural  distinction  of  any  kind  to 
recommend  him  to  popular  favor  —  as  obviously  disowned  or 
smitten  of  God. 

But  this  judgment  as  we  have  seen  is  eminently  fallacious, 
inasmuch  as  nature  is  in  reality  no  just  measure  of  the  creative 
resources,  any  more  than  the  materials  out  of  which  the  Cologne 
cathedral  is  wrought  are  a  just  measure  of  its  architect's  genius. 
On  the  contrary,  nature  is  an  incessant  foil  to  creation,  operating 
a  perpetual  constraint,  imposing  an  <  invincible  limitation,  upon 
the  motions  of  the  divine  spirit,  until  it  becomes  historically 
taken  up  or  reproduced  in  moral  form ;  until  it  becomes  histor- 
ically purged  and  renovated  through  man's  enlarging  self-knowl- 
edge, through  his  domestic,  his  civic,  and  his  political  experience, 
and  so  at  last  transfigured  with  an  exclusively  human  substance 
or  meaning.  Sense  has  no  hesitation  in  regarding  nature  as  an 
objective  work  of  God,  or  as  furnishing  the  legitimate  criterion 
of  his  power,  just  as  the  clock  is  an  objective  work  of  its  maker 
as  furnishing  the  proper  measure  of  his  activity.  But  the 
analogy  is  grossly  fallacious  and  misleading  for  this  reason, 
namely,  the  clock-maker  does  not  stand  in  a  creative  relation  to 
his  clock,  but  only  in  a  formative  one.  That  is  to  say,  he  does 
not  give  it  natural  selfhood  or  generic  identity,  with  a  view  to 
certain  subsequent  spiritual  possibilities  on  its  part,  with  a  view, 
for  example,  to  a  certain  specific  or  individual  reaction  on  its  part 
toward  himself;  just  as  God  endows  man  with  natural  subjec- 
tivity in  order  that  he  may  thereby  become  forever  spiritually 
objective  to  his  maker.  On  the  contrary,  he  simply  makes  the 
clock  out  of  lifeless  materials,  or  gives  it  a  purely  artificial  ex- 
istence with  a  view  to  supplement  his  own  subjective  infirmity, 
an  existence  of  which  the  clock  itself  can  have  no  enjoyment 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  129 

nor  any  perception ;  so  that,  instead  of  avouching  its  maker's 
spiritual  infinitude,  it  simply  illustrates  his  natural  limitations ; 
instead  of  proving  a  monument  of  his  wealth  and  power,  turns 
out  a  humble  confession  of  his  want  and  impotence.  The  foible 
of  the  mechanician  is  that  he  stands  in  a  purely  objective  re- 
lation to  his  work,  and  reduces  his  work  therefore  to  his  proper 
subjection.  The  glory  of  the  creator  and  his  strength  is  that 
he  makes  his  creature  his  exclusive  and  eternal  object,  and  him- 
self its  loving  subject.  Following  our  a  priori  instincts,  or 
judging  according  to  sense,  we  should  say  that  creation  must 
necessarily  arrange  itself  upon  the  plan  of  the  creature's  proper 
subjectivity  to  the  creator,  and  the  creator's  proper  objectivity 
to  the  creature.  But  the  light  of  revelation  stamps  this  judg- 
ment with  fatuity  in  showing  the  creator  invincibly  subject  to 
the  least  or  lowest  of  his  creatures,  and  this  least  or  lowest  in 
its  turn  invincibly  objective  to  him ;  so  that  creation  spiritually 
regarded  turns  out  so  exquisitely  balanced  an  equation  between 
the  creative  and  the  created  natures,  as  that  all  the  iniquity, 
transgression,  and  sin  of  the  lower  nature  become  freely  as- 
sumed by  the  higher,  and  all  the  holiness,  peace,  and  innocence 
of  the  latter  become  freely  made  over  to  the  former. 

Thus,  reason  emancipated  from  sense,  or  what  is  the  same 
thing  enlightened  by  revelation,  disowns  our  a  priori  reason- 
ing, and  pronounces  nature  an  altogether  subjective  divine  work 
enforced  in  the  exclusive  interest  of  man's  spiritual  evolution ; 
just  as  the  moral  control  I  exert  over  myself  is  a,  subjective 
work  on  my  part  enforced  by  my  objective  regard  for  society, 
or  my  sense  of  human  fellowship ;  just  as  an  artist's  education 
and  discipline — which  often  are  nothing  more  than  his  physical 
and  intellectual  penury  and  moral  compression  —  are  a  needful 
subjective  preparation  for  his  subsequent  objective  or  aesthetic 
expansion.  Nature  has  no  existence  in  itself  to  spiritual 
thought,  because  it  is  a  mere  implication  of  man,  just  as  the 
works  of  a  watch  have  no  existence  in  themselves  to  rational 
thought,  but  only  as  an  implication  of  the  watch ;  or  just  as  my 
brain  and  heart,  my  lungs  and  liver,  my  stomach  and  intestines, 
do  not  exist  on  their  own  account,  but  only  as  a  requisite  in- 
volution of  my  body.  Nature  exists  in  itself  only  to  carnal 
thought,  or  an  intelligence  unemancipated  from  sense ;  just  as 
9 


130  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

the  works  of  a  watch  would  claim  a  substantive  value  only  to  a 
savage  regard,  or  as  the  viscera  of  the  body  might  claim  a  sen- 
sible existence  independently  of  the  body,  or  out  of  their  due 
subordination  to  it,  only  to  uninstructed  thought.  Nature  and 
history  do  doubtless  evolve  or  explicate  the  spiritual  world,  be- 
cause they  are  first  of  all  inexorably  involved  or  implied  in  its 
life  ;  just  as  the  works  of  a  watch  explicate  the  watch  itself  on  its 
objective  or  functional  side  as  a  timekeeper,  because  they  are 
rigidly  implied  in  such  functioning ;  or  as  my  bodily  viscera  ex- 
plain the  life  of  my  body,  because  they  alone  furnish  the  condi- 
tions of  its  activity.  Bat  then  we  must  remember  that  nature 
and  history  illustrate  spiritual  existence  not  to  a  servile,  but  to  a 
free  or  qualified  intelligence ;  just  as  the  mechanism  of  a  watch 
illustrates  its  peculiar  function,  and  the  viscera  of  the  body  illus- 
trate its  proper  life,  only  to  the  eye  of  the  mind,  only  to  an 
educated  or  regenerate  intelligence,  and  by  no  means  to  the  eye 
of  sense. 

What  we  call  "  the  universe  of  nature,"  then,  and  conceive 
to  exist  in  itself  or  substantively,  i.  e.  in  equal  independence  of 
God  and  man,  is  a  gigantic  superstition  of  our  spiritual  ignorance 
and  imbecility.  There  is  no  universal  natural  substance,  but 
only  a  universal  spiritual  substance,  God  the  creator ;  and  there 
is  no  individual  spiritual  form  answering  to  this  substance,  but 
only  an  individual  natural  form,  man  the  creature.  But  these 
two,  although  they  are  indissolubly  one  in  creation,  or  to  the 
divine  mind,  are  altogether  distinct,  and  even  antagonistic  to 
consciousness,  or  the  created  imagination.  For  consciousness  is 
built  upon  sense,  and  sense  analyzes  or  dissolves  existence,  put- 
ting the  universal  before,  and  the  individual  after,  or  one  here 
and  the  other  there;  while  it  is  only  the  reason  emancipated 
from  sense  which  synthetizes  existence,  or  sees  the  universal 
only  in  the  individual,  the  individual  only  in  the  universal.  In 
fact  consciousness  or  life  would  be  wholly  impossible  to  the 
creature,  without  this  sharp  discrimination  of  its  physical  or 
universal  element  from  its  moral  or  individual  element ;  for 
consciousness  means  the  union  of  an  inward  subject  and  an 
outward  object,  being  so  much  the  more  or  less  vivacious  as  the 
object  is  more  or  less  identified  with  the  nature  of  the  subject. 
Thus,  what  creation  when  regarded  from  a  spiritual  or  inward 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  131 

point  of  view  unites  —  namely,  infinite  and  finite,  creator  and 
creature,  substance  and  form,  reality  and  appearance,  universal 
and  particular,  genus  and  species,  homo  and  vir,  man  and 
woman  —  these  it  invariably  divides  when  regarded  from  a 
sensible  or  outward  point  of  view,  presenting  them  together 
never  in  harmonious,  but  always  in  opposing  fashion.  They 
never  produce  a  unitary,  but  always  a  reciprocally  hostile  im- 
pression upon  the  mind  controlled  by  sense,  God  the  creator 
being  whatever,  whenever,  and  wherever  man  the  creature  is 
not,  and  the  latter  of  course  standing  in  like  contrariety  to 
the  former.  Sense,  in  short,  converts  creation  from  a  spiritual 
achievement  of  God  in  human  nature  exclusively,  or  the  realm  of 
consciousness,  into  a  purely  mechanical  exploit  of  divine  power 
in  space  and  time,  and  hence  puts  an  effectual  end  to  the  hope 
of  any  spiritual  or  free  intercourse  between  creator  and  creature : 
so  that  a  consciousness  built  upon  sense  requires  to  undergo  a 
complete  outward  demolition  and  inward  renewing,  before  it 
can  be  at  all  conformed  to  the  truth  of  things. 

But  what  especially  interests  philosophy  in  the  facts  we  have 
just  recited,  as  bearing  upon  the  Christian  revelation,  and  what 
therefore  it  is  especially  incumbent  on  us  to  observe,  is,  that 
what  is  spiritually  greatest  in  existence,  i.  e.  what  is  uppermost 
to  creative  thought,  namely,  the  creature  himself,  is  naturally 
least,  or  of  comparatively  no  account  to  created  thought ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  what  is  spiritually  least,  or  of  no  account 
whatever  to  creative  thought,  namely,  the  creator  himself,  is 
comparatively  so  overpowering  to  the  created  imagination  as 
almost  to  suffocate  its  capacity  of  spiritual  life.  I  am  not  so  pre- 
sumptuous as  to  lament  the  fact ;  I  only  signalize  it.  For  the 
helpless  necessity  of  the  case  is,  that  what  is  first  in  creative 
order  shall  be  last  in  created,  and  what  is  last  first.  This 
necessity  inheres  in  the  infinitude  or  perfection  of  the  creative 
love.  For  God  is  infinite  love;  that  is  to  say,  his  love  is  a 
purely  objective  love,  without  any  subjective  drawback  or  reac- 
tion, being  a  pure  love  of  others  untempered  by  the  least  love 
of  himself,  so  that  he  cannot  help  making  himself  over  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  perfection  to  whatsoever  is  not  himself.  But 
whatsoever  is  not  creator  is  creature,  and  how  shall  the  former 
make  himself  over  in  the  plenitude  of  his  uncreated  love  to  the 


132  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

latter,  when  the  very  fact  of  the  latter's  creature  ship  must  trans- 
mute all  that  love  into  instant  self-love  ?  Of  course  there  is  no 
alternative  if  creation  is  really  to  take  place.  The  creative  love 
must  either  disavow  its  infinitude,  and  so  renounce  creation,  or 
else  it  must  frankly  submit  to  all  the  degradation  the  created 
nature  imposes  upon  it,  i.  e.  it  must  consent  to  be  converted 
from  infinite  love  in  itself  to  an  altogether  finite  love  in  the 
creature.  There  is  nothing  in  the  creature  but  what  is  a  fortiori 
in  the  creator,  save  the  mark  of  his  creatureship,  which  is  "  self- 
hood "  or  moral  consciousness,  being  the  wholly  fallacious  judg- 
ment he  derives  from  the  inspiration  of  sense  as  to  his  own 
absoluteness,  or  the  fancied  power  of  unlimited  control  he  pos- 
sesses over  his  own  actions.  If  accordingly  the  creative  love 
should  scruple  to  permit  proprium  or  self  hood  to  its  creature  — 
scruple  to  endow  him  with  moral  consciousness  —  it  would 
withhold  from  him  all  conscious  life  or  joy,  and  leave  him  at  the 
highest  a  mere  form  of  vegetative  and  animal  existence.  Crea- 
tion, to  be  spiritual — i.  e.  to  allow  of  any  true  fellowship  or 
equality  between  creator  and  creature  —  demands  that  the 
creature  be  himself,  that  is,  be  naturally  posited  to  his  own 
consciousness,  and  he  cannot  be  thus  posited  save  in  so  far  as  the 
creative  love  vivifies  his  essential  destitution,  organizes  it  in 
living  form,  and  by  the  experience  thus  engendered  in  the 
created  bosom  lays  a  basis  for  any  amount  of  free  or  spiritual 
reaction  in  the  creature  towards  the  uncreated  good. 

One  sees  at  a  glance,  then,  how  very  discreditable  a  thing 
creation  would  be  to  the  creator,  and  how  very  injurious  to  the 
creature,  if  it  stopped  short  in  itself,  i.  e.  contented  itself  with 
simply  giving  the  creature  natural  selfhood,  or  antagonizing  him 
with  the  creator.  Nothing  could  be  more  hideous  to  conceive  of 
than  a  creation  which  should  end  by  exhibiting  the  subjective 
antagonism  of  its  two  factors,  without  providing  for  their  subse- 
quent objective  reconciliation  ;  which  should  show  every  cupidity 
incident  to  the  abstract  nature  of  the  creature  inflamed  to  infin- 
itude, while  the  helpless  creature  himself  at  the  same  time  was 
left  to  be  the  unlimited  prey  of  his  nature.  Certainly  no  such 
abortive  creative  conception  as  this  attributes  itself  to  the  divine 
love,  for  that  love  is  methodized  by  an  infinite  wisdom,  a  wis- 
dom proportionate  to  itself.  That  is  to  say,  creation,  spiritually 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  133 

regarded,  does  not  stop  in  itself,  does  not  consist  in  giving  the 
creature  mere  natural  selfhood,  or  finite  and  phenomenal  exist- 
ence, but  acknowledges  itself  at  bottom  a  great  purgative  or 
redemptive  process,  whereby  the  very  nature  of  the  creature 
becomes  finally  freed  from  its  intrinsic  limitations,  and  eternally 
associated  with  infinite  goodness  and  truth.  For  the  creative 
power,  properly  so  called,  which  consists  in  energizing  the  nature 
of  the  creature  to  the  extent  of  affording  him  moral  conscious- 
ness, or  a  quasi  life  in  himself,  is  of  necessity  limited  by  that 
nature,  and  can  never  avouch  its  proper  infinitude  consequently 
but  by  overcoming  the  nature,  i.  e.  by  exalting  it  out  of  physical 
and  moral  into  exclusively  social  and  assthetic  lineaments.  Thus 
while  creation  shows  us  the  creature  naturally  or  subjectively 
projected  from  his  creative  source,  alienated  from  (i.  e.  made 
other-thari)  God,  redemption  shows  us  the  creator  joyfully  ac- 
quiescing in  that  event,  or  invisibly  accompanying  him  into  the 
most  intimate  fastnesses  of  his  alienation,  in  order  there  to  bring 
about  his  spiritual  or  objective  restoration. 

Now,  the  providential  machinery  of  this  great  revolution  in 
our  historic  consciousness  is  supplied,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the 
church,  which  is  the  sole  and  unconscious  guardian  of  the  race's 
spiritual  progress.  I  say  "unconscious,"  because  the  church 
has  always  identified  its  interests  with  those  of  the  natural  self- 
hood in  man,  with  the  interests  of  his  quasi  life  in  himself,  and, 
by  washing  it  here  and  feeding  it  there,  has  vainly  sought  to 
make  it  bring  forth  positive  divine  or  infinite  fruit.  The  church 
has  never  had  a  misgiving  as  to  the  absolute  nature  of  our  moral 
experience.  It  has  always  taken  for  granted  that  conscience  was 
a  divine  finality,  the  good  man  being  absolutely  good,  or  good  in 
himself,  and  the  evil  man  absolutely  evil,  or  evil  in  himself;  and 
has  never  so  much  as  conceived  consequently  that  heaven  and 
hell,  angel  and  devil,  were  only  the  positive  and  negative  signs 
of  a  great  unitary  work  of  redemption  yet  to  be  accomplished, 
by  divine  might  exclusively,  in  human  nature  itself.  The  church 
has  always  placed  itself  at  the  point  of  view  of  sense  in  divine 
things,  and  has  greedily  drunk  in  whatsoever  that  cunning  old 
serpent  has  taught  it  of  the  essential  or  absolute,  and  by  no  means 
purely  provisional,  worth  of  the  moral  sentiment.  It  has  always 
identified  itself  with  the  literal  or  merely  created  life  of  man  as 


134  THE   SECKET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

against  his  spiritual  or  regenerate  possibilities ;  with  the  prin- 
ciple of  fate  or  necessity  in  existence  as  against  that  of  freedom 
or  delight ;  with  the  generic  or  universal  and  masculine  element 
in  consciousness  as  against  the  specific  or  individual  and  feminine 
element ;  and  has  never  had  a  suspicion  accordingly  that  the  day 
could  dawn  when  its  function  would  cease  by  its  own  limitation : 
i.  e.  when  the  vir  or  u  woman  "  would  renounce  her  enforced 
allegiance  to  the  homo  or  "  man"  ;  when  the  sentiment  of  freedom 
in  the  human  bosom  would  overtop  that  of  fate  or  constraint,  and 
our  private  life  disavow  its  rightful  subserviency  to  our  public 
necessities.  The  church  has  always  regarded  the  adamic  or 
finite  element  in  consciousness  as  absolute,  and  has  never  had  a 
dream  of  its  eventually  confessing  itself  an  abject  foil  or  back- 
ground to  the  interests  of  our  spiritual  life.  And  yet,  in  spite 
of  the  church's  carnality,  in  spite  of  her  dense  stupidity  in  spirit- 
ual things,  or  rather  indeed  in  virtue  of  it,  she  has  been  an  unfal- 
tering servant  of  human  progress,  an  invaluable  divine  handmaid 
in  the  evolution  of  man's  true  destiny.  For,  by  blindly  avouch- 
ing, as  she  has  always  done,  not  merely  the  logical  but  the 
absolute,  not  merely  the  phenomenal  but  the  real,  contrariety  of 
creator  and  creature,  or  identifying  herself  with  the  honor  of  God 
as  against  that  of  man,  she  has  so  inflamed  the  fanaticism  of  the 
human  bosom  as  gradually  to  provoke  the  disgust  and  indig- 
nation of  all  thoughtful  and  modest  natures,  and  so  reduce 
religion  from  its  old  magisterial  to  a  now  wholly  ministerial 
efficacy  in  human  affairs.  She  has  always  espoused  the  re- 
ligious as  against  the  secular  life  of  man,  and  by  running  that 
interest  out  to  its  last  gasp  of  blasphemous  and  insolent  preten- 
sion in  the  pride  of  the  ascetic  conscience,  has  ended  at  last  by 
organizing  such  a  godly  revolt  and  reaction  in  the  secular  or  lay 
bosom,  as  must  ultimately  revolutionize  the  existing  relations 
of  creature  to  creator,  or  convert  them  from  a  polemic  to  a 
pacific  character,  and  so  bring  about  the  complete  eventual 
redemption  of  the  race.  It  takes  for  granted,  or  assumes  as  un- 
questionable, the  superiority  —  as  given  in  the  sensuous  imagi- 
nation —  of  the  creator  to  the  creature,  of  the  creative  to  the 
created  element  in  existence,  of  the  divine  to  the  human,  of  the 
Iwmo  to  the  vir,  the  man  to  the  woman,  of  what  merely  creates 
or  gives  being  to  things  to  what  redeems  or  gives  them  form, 


THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  135 

thus  of  the  distinctively  substantial  or  masculine  and  universal 
element  in  consciousness,  to  its  distinctively  formal  or  feminine 
and  individual  element ;  and  by  persistently  pushing  this  assump- 
tion out  to  its  logical  and  most  inhuman  issues,  arouses  at  last  so 
vigorous  a  resentment  in  the  secular  bosom,  so  righteous  and 
reverential  a  reaction  towards  the  outraged  name  of  God,  as  end 
erelong  in  transfiguring  the  common  mind  of  the  race  into  the 
sole  meet  and  adequate  temple  of  the  divine  infinitude.  The 
church  ratines  a  outrance  the  provisional  despotism  exercised  by 
nature  over  man,  by  the  cosmical  or  public  interest  in  existence 
over  the  human  and  private  interest,  by  the  husband  over  the 
wife,  by  the  parent  over  the  child,  by  the  strong  over  the  weak, 
by  the  wise  over  the  simple,  by  the  flesh  over  the  spirit,  by  our 
organic  necessities  over  our  spontaneous  delights,  by  our  sensuous 
appetites  and  passions  over  our  rational  affections  and  thoughts  ; 
and  it  thereby  succeeds  in  engendering  so  desperate  a  resistance 
and  so  acute  a  suffering  in  the  innocent  bosom  of  the  race,  that 
the  heart  of  God  melts  with  compassion,  and  he  makes  the 
cause  of  the  oppressed  —  the  cause  of  mankind  —  his  sole  and 
righteous  cause  forevermore. 

XXI. 

Thus  we  are  brought  back  through  this  long  circuit  to  our 
original  thesis,  and  have  only  to  make  a  clear  estimate  of  its  phil- 
osophic significance,  in  order  to  see  the  end  of  our  labor. 

It  is  true  that  God  creates  the  homo  (Adam,  man)  male  and 
female  in  his  own  image  ;  and  the  homo,  because  he  is  a  created 
being,  is  all  unconscious  of  himself,  —  that  is,  without  moral 
form,  or  inwardly  void,  being  still  immersed  in  mineral,  vege- 
table, and  animal  conditions.  The  truth  of  creation  necessitates 
that  the  creator  be  all  in  the  creature,  and  the  creature  in  him- 
self nothing,  so  that  unless  the  creator  contrive  in  some  way 
to  give  the  creature  selfhood,  creation  might  as  well  have  re- 
mained unattempted.  Unless  the  creator  be  able  to  conceal 
his  creative  presence  and  power  under  a  mask  of  the  utmost 
imbecility  and  impotence,  by  making  creation  wear  the  as- 
pect at  most  of  a  contingent  truth,  or  allowing  the  creature  to 
attribute  to  himself  a  strictly  natural  origin  and  destiny,  the 


136  THE  SECKET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

latter  will  never  put  on  form,  will  never  come  to  consciousness. 
So  long  as  the  truth  of  creation  enjoins  that  the  creator  be  all  in 
the  creature,  and  the  creature  in  himself  nothing,  it  is  evident 
that  creation  can  never  attain  to  actuality  unless  the  creator  be 
able  utterly  to  sink  himself  out  of  sight,  and  let  the  creature 
alone  appear  to  be.  In  other  words  the  creative  power  must 
vivify  the  created  nature  by  giving  it  moral  form,  or  endowing  it 
with  selfhood,  before  the  creature  will  ever  attain  to  that  con- 
scious, phenomenal,  or  subjective  projection  from  his  creative 
source  which  is  implied  in  the  truth  of  his  real  or  objective 
creation.  Of  course  no  one  can  conceive  of  such  a  thing  as  a 
real  or  absolute  separation  of  creature  from  creator,  enforced  by 
anything  accidental  to  their  relation :  for  by  the  hypothesis  of 
creation,  which  makes  the  creator  all  in  the  relation,  and  the 
creature  in  himself  nothing,  everything  conceivably  accidental 
to  it  is  excluded :  but  only  a  logical  or  conscious  separation, 
which  is  rigidly  incidental  to  the  possibilities  of  their  eternal 
spiritual  intercourse  and  conjunction.*  And  this  conscious  or 
contingent  separation  of  creature  from  creator  is  all  that  is 
meant  by  the  creator  giving  him  natural  selfhood,  or  quasi  life 
in  himself.  A  creative  —  which  of  necessity  is  an  infinite  —  love 
can  have  no  shadow  of  respect  to  itself  in  creating,  but  only  to 
the  creature,  or  what  is  not  itself.  Hence  its  supreme  aspira- 
tion must  be  to  lift  its  creature  at  any  risk  out  of  dumb  crea- 
tureship  into  intelligent  sonship,  i.  e.  out  of  fatal  into  free  con- 
ditions of  life,  out  of  necessary  into  contingent  relations  with 
itself,  by  endowing  him  with  self-consciousness  (which  means 
sensible  alienation  from,  or  otherness  than,  itself),  that  so  his 
subsequent  frank  and  spontaneous  reaction  towards  infinite 
goodness  and  truth  may  be  eternally  secured  and  promoted. 

It  is  clear  then  that  while  we  say  God  creates  the  homo,  wre 
cannot  say  that  he  creates,  but  only  that  he  begets,  the  vir. 
He  creates  the  natural  man,  the  maximus  homo,  male  and  fe- 
male in  his  own  image,  —  the  grand,  unconscious,  universal,  or 
cosmical  man,  who  embraces  in  himself  the  entire  realm  of 
sense,  all  worlds  wandering  and  fixed,  and  is  attested  by  every 

*  Any  conception  contrary  to  this  would  imply  that  the  creature  is  life  in  him- 
self, and  not  exclusively  in  the  creator  —  hence,  that  he  is  the  creator  himself 
over  again. 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  137 

fact  of  existence,  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal.  But  beneath 
the  ribs  of  this  sleeping  Adam,  this  wholly  unconscious  maximus 
homo,  or  universal  man,  he  inwardly  builds  up  the  minimus 
homo,  the  moral  or  conscious  Eve,  the  petty,  specific,  domestic 
vir  of  our  actual  bosoms,  who  embraces  in  himself  the  entire 
spiritual  world,  the  universe  of  affection  and  thought,  and  to 
whom  all  the  facts  of  life,  i.  e.  all  the  events  of  history,  great 
and  small,  public  and  private,  and  all  the  results  of  experience, 
good  and  evil,  true  and  false,  exclusively  pertain.  Give  par- 
ticular heed  to  this  discrimination,  for  it  is  what  emphatically 
distinguishes  Swedenborg's  intellectual  method  from  that  of 
every  philosophic  system  hitherto  in  vogue  ;  and  if  the  method 
fail  accordingly  to  justify  itself  to  our  understanding  in  this  par- 
ticular, it  must  utterly  fail  to  do  so,  since  all  the  data  of  spiritual 
observation  and  experience  upon  which  it  is  based  are  vitalized 
exclusively  by  the  discrimination  in  question. 

Let  me  insist  then  upon  being  perfectly  understood. 

I  am  a  conscious,  which  means  a  composite  or  unitary,  and 
not  a  simple  or  absolute,  form  of  life,  because  I  am  both  object- 
ive and  subjective  to  myself.  On  my  physical  side  —  my  fixed, 
organic,  passive,  maternal  side — by  which  I  am  related  to  nature 
or  outlying  existence,  I  am  my  own  object.  On  my  moral  or 
personal  side  —  my  contingent,  free,  active,  or  paternal  side  — 
by  which  I  am  related  to  man  or  my  kind,  I  am  my  own  subject. 
Now  in  the  former  aspect  of  my  existence  I  am  a  creature, 
identical  with  all  that  exists ;  in  the  latter  I  am  spiritually  be- 
gotten or  inwardly  formed,  and  hence  am  consciously  individ- 
ualized from  whatsoever  else  that  exists.  It  is  indeed  obvious 
that  in  this  latter  aspect  of  my  personality,  I  can  with  no  pro- 
priety be  said  to  be  created,  but  only  generated  or  begotten  ; 
because  it  stamps  me  consciously  free,  i.  e.  makes  me  to  my 
own  perception  praiseworthy  or  blameworthy  as  I  do  well  or  ill. 
And  no  mere  creature  of  a  superior  power  can  possess  con- 
science, because  conscience  means  autonomy  or  self-rule,  and 
self-rule  contradicts  creatureship.  Conscience,  or  the  faculty 
of  self-rule,  implies  that  its  subject  be  equal  to  its  object.  Thus, 
if  God  be  the  proper  object  and  man  the  proper  subject  of  the 
faculty,  it  implies  so  far  a  spiritual  fellowship  or  equality  between 
the  two.  Hence  what  I  learn  from  Swedenborg  is,  that  while 


138  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBOEG. 

on  my  physical  or  organic  side,  the  side  of  my  natural  want, 
of  my  overpowering  appetites  and  passions,  I  am  God's  abject 
creature,  and  hence  wholly  unredeemed  from  the  fate  which 
impends  over  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  on  my  moral  or 
conscious  side,  the  side  of  my  personal  fulness,  of  my  rational 
affection  and  thought,  and  the  free  activity  engendered  by 
these,  I  become  released  from  this  created  vassalage  and  ele- 
vated into  God's  spiritual  sonship,  —  the  fact  of  my  personal 
consciousness,  of  my  felt  selfhood  or  freedom,  being  the  inex- 
pugnable witness  and  fruit  of  the  inward  and  invisible  marriage 
which  eternally  unites  the  creative  and  created  natures.  In  a 
word,  so  far  as  I  am  homo,  and  therefore  only  physically  con- 
scious, being  generically  identified  with  all  existence,  I  am 
God's  servile  creature,  knowing  fulness  and  want,  to  be  sure, 
or  sensible  pleasure  and  pain,  but  without  any  conscience  of 
moral,  i.  e.  supersensuous,  good  and  evil.  On  the  contrary,  so 
far  as  I  am  vir,  and  therefore  morally  or  personally  conscious, 
being  formally  individualized  from  all  lower  existence,  and  iden- 
tified only  with  man,  I  am  God's  veritable  son,  being  spiritually 
begotten  of  him  through  his  living  absorption  in  the  homo,  and 
am  consequently  endowed  with  conscience,  which  is  the  faculty 
of  discerning  between  good  and  evil,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing, 
of  freely  compelling  myself  away  from  a  finite  and  illusory  good 
to  one  which  is  infinite  and  real,  and  so  coming  at  last  into  the 
deathless  fellowship  of  his  perfection. 

This,  then,  is  the  remarkable  addition  made  by  Swedenborg 
to  philosophy,  —  an  addition  which  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  re- 
creates philosophy,  or  makes  it  from  hitherto  standing  upon  its 
head  stand  henceforth  upon  its  feet.  According  to  Swedenborg, 
man  morally  regarded,  the  vir  or  conscious  man,  is  divinely  be- 
gotten of  the  homo  or  cosmical  man  ;  whereas,  according  to  all 
authoritative  or  recognized  philosophy,  human  nature  is  a  mere 
helpless  involution  of  cosmical  nature,  and  man  just  as  much 
the  unlimited  creature  of  God  in  his  moral  or  specific  aspect  as 
he  is  in  his  physical  or  generic  one.  Thus  the  vulgar  concep- 
tion of  creation  is  that  nature  absolutely  separates  between  God 
and  the  soul,  so  that  the  moral  or  conscious  subject  is  actually 
distanced  from  God,  in  place  of  being  really  brought  near  to 
him,  by  all  the  breadth  of  the  cosmos.  To  Swedenborg  this 


THE   SECKET   OF   SWEDENBOKG.  139 

judgment  is  the  mere  dotage  of  sense.  He  makes  the  moral  or 
conscious  world  involve  the  physical  or  unconscious  one,  just  as 
cause  involves  effect,  or  form  substance,  or  the  body  its  viscera, 
i.  e.  not  as  deriving  objective  being  or  character  from'  it,  of 
course,  but  subjective  existence  or  constitution.  He  makes  man 
involve  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  precisely  as  the  statue 
involves  the  marble,  not  of  course  as  receiving  spiritual  form 
from  these  things,  but  material  body.  According  to  Sweden- 
borg,  human  nature  has  no  quantitative,  but  only  a  qualitative 
manifestation ;  what  is  quantity,  substance,  or  body  in  it  being 
supplied  by  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  existence ;  what  is 
quality,  form,  or  life  being  supplied  by  infinite  love  and  wis- 
dom. That  is  to  say,  man,  in  so  far  as  he  is  man,  does  not 
exist  to  sense,  but  only  to  consciousness,  and  consequently 
human  nature  properly  speaking  is  not  a  thing  of  physical  but 
of  strictly  moral  attributes.  In  so  far  as  man  exists  to  sense  he 
is  identical  with  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal ;  and  it  is  only 
as  he  exists  to  consciousness  that  he  becomes  naturally  differ- 
enced or  individualized  from  these  lower  forms,  and  puts  on  a 
truly  human,  which  is  an  exclusively  moral,  personality.* 

Indeed,  Swedenborg's  ontological  principles  compel  us  to  go 
further  than  this,  inasmuch  as  they  stamp  the  generic  element 
in  all  existence,  the  element  of  identity,  as  strictly  phenomenal, 
while  they  make  the  specific  element,  the  element  of  individu- 
ality, alone  real.  He  makes  the  subjective  element  in  all  exist- 
ence —  physical  existence  no  less  than  moral  —  not  real,  i.  e. 
purely  phenomenal,  because  it  is  created,  or  possesses  being  not 
in  itself,  but  in  what  is  not  itself ;  and  he  makes  reality  attach 
only  to  the  objective  or  formal  contents  of  existence,  because 
these  are  not  naturally  created,  but  spiritually  begotten.  For 
example :  the  rose  in  its  generic,  subjective,  or  constitutional 
aspect,  or  in  so  far  as  it  falls  within  the  sphere  of  physics,  is 
identical  with  all  the  other  facts  of  physics,  and  is  therefore 

*  Swedenborg  makes  spiritual  perception  to  consist  in  the  removal  or  abstraction 
of  quantities  from  qualities.  "Thus,"  he  says,  "spiritual  thought  (and*  spiritual 
affection  also)  is  altogether  alien  to  natural  thought;  so  alien,  in  fact,  as  to  tran- 
scend natural  ideas,  and  make  itself  dimly  intelligible  only  to  an  interior  rational 
vision,  and  this  —  non  aliter  quam  per  abstractiones  sen  remoliones  quantitatum  a  quali- 
tatibus."  See  the  little  tract  De  Divina  Sapientia,  VII.,  5,  at  the  end  of  the  Apoca- 
li/psis  Explicata. 


140  THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

without  selfhood  —  that  is,  without  anything  to  individualize  or 
make  it  differ  from  universal  nature ;  without  anything  to  make 
it  rose  rather  than  lily  or  cabbage.  But  in  its  specific,  object- 
ive, formal,  or  characteristic  aspect,  in  which  it  is  rose  and 
nothing  else,  i.  e.  in  so  far  as  it  transcends  the  realm  of  phys- 
ics and  falls  within  that  of  mind,  by  becoming  permanently 
objective  to  human  affection  and  thought,  it  is  strictly  individ- 
ualized from  all  other  existence,  and  claims  a  real  or  absolute  in 
place  of  a  contingent  or  phenomenal  quality ;  claims  in  short 
to  exist  in  its  own  proper  form,  in  its  own  distinct  and  deathless 
individuality,  and  not  alone  in  mere  and  sheer  identification 
with  all  other  existence.  Qua  plant  the  rose  is  undeniably 
identical  with  all  plant  life,  just  as  the  horse  qua  animal  is  iden- 
tical with  all  animality.  But  the  rose  qua  rose,  or  the  horse 
qua  horse,  is  itself  and  nothing  else,  being  individualized  or 
differenced  from  all  other  existence.  How  ?  By  its  alliance 
with  the  human  consciousness,  of  whose  structure  it  forms  a 
component  part.  The  rose  and  the  horse,  which  in  themselves 
or  subjectively  possess  only  a  phenomenal  existence  undistin- 
guishable  from  all  other  phenomena,  nevertheless  objectively,  or 
in  man,  claim  a  real  or  absolute  significance,  being  a  part  of  the 
creative  logos  or  word  by  which  alone  we  love  and  think  and 
speak  and  act.  They  are  a  constituent  portion  of  our  mental 
structure,  so  that  if  they  were  away  the  human  mind  would  be 
to  that  extent  impoverished,  or  out  of  correspondence  with 
spiritual  truth.  Neither  in  universals  nor  in  particulars  does 
the  mind  permit  itself  to  be  regarded  as  of  an  abstract,  but  only 
as  of  a  concrete  nature.  In  both  spheres  alike  (the  universal 
and  the  particular)  the  mind  claims  to  exist  before  it  lives,  — 
claims  an  unconscious  substance  before  it  has  a  conscious  form, 
claims  an  unquickened  body  before  it  has  a  living  soul.  The 
body  or  substance  of  the  mind  in  its  universal  aspect  is  identi- 
cal with  love,  for  love  is  the  unconscious  life  of  the  homo ;  all 
homines  —  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  —  having  sensation, 
and  being  therefore  instinctual  forms  of  affection.  The  body,  or 
substance  of  the  mind,  again,  in  its  individual  aspect,  is  truth; 
for  truth  is  the  conscious  life  of  the  vir,  all  viri  —  good  and 
evil,  great  and  small,  wise  and  simple,  able  and  weak  —  pos- 
sessing knowledge,  and  being  therefore  instinctual  forms  of  in- 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  141 

telligence.  And  neither  sensation  nor  knowledge  is  an  abstract, 
but  purely  a  concrete  quality,  as  no  one  can  either  feel  or  know 
but  by  an  organic  contact  with  the  objects  of  feeling  and  knowl- 
edge. 

Thus,  according  to  Swedenborg,  the-  generic  element  in  all 
existence,  or  what  identifies  and  universalizes  it,  is  what  stamps 
it  phenomenal  and  perishable  ;  and  the  specific  element,  or  what 
individualizes  it  from  all  other  existence,  is  what  alone  stamps  it 
real  and  absolute  with  all  the  reality  and  absoluteness  of  the 
mind  itself. 

But  let  us  take  another  very  important  step  in  advance. 
Man  morally  regarded,  the  vir  of  consciousness,  is  divinely 
begotten  of  the  homo  or  physical  man ;  is  an  outbirth  of  the 
divine  spirit,  not  directly,  but  inversely,  through  the  homo,  — 
a  precipitate,  so  to  speak,  in  finite  or  personal  form  of  the  infinite 
love  and  wisdom  pent  up,  imprisoned,  degraded,  drowned  out  in 
the  cosmos.  But  now,  if  the  vir  be  an  inversion  of  the  homo, 
then  we  must  expect  to  find  what  is  first  in  the  latter  (namely, 
substance,  the  generic  or  universal  principle,  which  means  God 
the  creator)  becoming  last  in  the  former ;  and  what  is  last, 
(form,  the  specific  or  individual  principle,  which  means  man 
the  creature)  first.  Accordingly  this  is  the  exact  difference  the 
vir  actually  presents  to  the  homo.  In  the  homo  the  race  princi- 
ple, the  principle  of  universality,  or  community,  is  everything 
comparatively,  and  the  family  principle,  the  principle  of  individ- 
uality or  difference,  is  comparatively  nothing ;  while  in  the  vir 
the  family  principle  is  comparatively  everything,  and  the  race 
principle  comparatively  nothing.  So  that  the  vir  is  an  un- 
questionable inversion  of  the  homo  divinely  operated  or  be- 
gotten. 

But  now  what  is  the  method  of  this  great  achievement? 
How  can  we  rationally  conceive  of  the  vir  being  spiritually  be- 
gotten by  the  divine  power  out  of  the  homo  ?  In  other  words, 
what  conceivable  ratio  is  there  between  the  wholly  unconscious 
life  of  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  and  the  wholly  conscious 
life  of  man  ?  Between  the  blind  instinctual  groping  of  Adam, 
and  the  clear  intelligent  will  of  Eve  ?  Between  the  utterly 
unselfish  nature  of  the  homo,  and  the  utterly  selfish  nature  of 
the  vir?  Between  the  innocence  which  characterizes  all  our 


142  THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

distinctively  humane  tendencies  and  affections,  and  the  guilt 
which  stains  all  our  distinctively  virtuous  ones  ?  We  shall 
easily  find  the  answer  to  this  inquiry,  but  we  must  give  a  new 
chapter  to  the  investigation. 


,    XXII. 

What  is  the  question  we  seek  to  have  answered? 

It  is  a  question  about  the  genesis  of  consciousness,  or  as  to  the 
precise  nexus  that  obtains  between  physical  and  moral  existence. 
We  wish  to  know  how  the  vir  is  divinely  begotten  of  the  homo. 
How  does  man  become  extricated  from  his  mineral,  vegetable, 
and  animal  conditions,  or  stereotyped  in  properly  human,  which 
is  moral,  form  ? 

The  logical  situation  out  of  which  the  question  proceeds  can- 
not be  too  clearly  conceived  to  begin  with.  It  may  be  thus 
more  explicitly  restated :  — 

What  is  meant  by  creating?  It  means  —  strictly  interpreted 
—  giving  being  to  things.  Thus  when  we  call  God  a  creator,  we 
mean  to  say  that  he  and  he  alone  gives  being  to  things ;  that  he 
and  he  alone  constitutes  the  real  or  absolute  truth  of  existence. 
But  as  the  giving  being  to  things  necessarily  implies  that  the 
things  themselves  phenomenally  or  subjectively  exist,  so  the  cre- 
ative process  involves  a  subordinate  and  preliminary  process  of 
making,  or  forming,  whereby  the  things  created  attain  to  sub- 
jective dimensions.  Thus  when  we  say  that  God  creates  the 
universe  of  nature,  we  explicitly  assert  indeed  that  all  natural 
existences  owe  their  specific  form  or  variety  to  him,  but  we  im- 
plicitly affirm  also  that  he  gives  them  generic  substance  or 
identity  as  well,  since  without  this  as  a  background  or  basis  their 
specific  differences  could  not  appear  or  exist.  The  universe  is 
not  a  simple,  but  a  complex  phenomenon.  It  claims  finite  ex- 
istence in  itself  as  well  as  infinite  being  in  God  ;  phenomenal  or 
contingent  substance  as  well  as  real  or  absolute  form ;  chaotic 
or  communistic  subjectivity  no  less  than  orderly  or  diversified 
objectivity ;  and  what  any  cosmological  doctrine,  assuming  to  be 
philosophically  competent,  is  concerned  with  specially  is  the 
former,  not  the  latter,  of  these  claims.  The  latter  claim  is  self- 
evident.  God  the  creator  is  himself  infinite  and  eternal,  and  it 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  143 

is  a  matter  of  course,  therefore,  that  he  should  communicate 
infinite  and  eternal  being  to  his  creature.  The  difficulty  is  to 
imagine  him  giving  anything  less  than  this ;  that  is,  to  imagine 
him  giving  the  creature  finite  and  temporal  existence.  This  is 
the  obvious  contradiction  involved  in  the  creative  problem ;  and 
no  doctrine  of  creation  accordingly  can  stand  a  moment's  scru- 
tiny, which  does  not  on  its  face  resolve  this  contradiction. 

Sensuously  conceived,  of  course  creation  amounts  to  a  simple 
conjuring  trick  or  magical  feat  on  the  part  of  God,  whereby  a  real 
something  is  produced  out  of  apparent  nothing.  But  to  the 
philosophic  apprehension  creation  means  that  God  gives  spiritual 
reality  to  existence  only  in  so  far  as  he  gives  it  material  actual- 
ity ;  that  he  gives  specific  form  or  differential  quality  to  things 
only  in  so  far  as  he  endows  them  with  generic  substance  or 
common  quantity.  This  is  the  intimate  and  essential  logic  of 
the  conception,  that  the  objective  truth  or  reality  of  creation  is 
utterly  contingent  upon  its  subjective  fact  or  appearance.  We 
are  ready  enough  to  concede  that  God  qualifies  existence,  or 
gives  it  visible  form ;  bat  we  are  by  no  means  so  ready  to  per- 
ceive that  he  also  quantifies  it  or  gives  it  inward  invisible  sub- 
stance as  well.  This  latter  role  we  conveniently  assign  to  a 
certain  metaphysic  entity  we  call  Nature,  which  has  no  fibre  of 
actuality  in  the  absolute  truth  of  things,  but  which  we  in  our 
ignorance  of  the  creative  power  superstitiously  summon  to  our  aid 
nevertheless,  whenever  we  would  intellectually  account  for  ex- 
istence. No  doubt  we  agree  that  this  abstraction  called  Nature 
had  some  sort  of  mysterious  being  given  it  "once  upon  a  time" 
by  God,  in  order  to  quantify  all  subsequent  forms  of  life  which 
might  appear,  or  give  them  projection  from  their  creative  source; 
indeed  we  are  very  forward  to  maintain  creation  in  this  ghastly 
chronic  or  fossil  sense  against  all  disputants.  But  that  creation 
still  exists  in  any  acute  or  living  sense  of  the  word,  that  any 
and  every  concrete  form  of  nature  which  we  see  begotten  and 
born  in  endless  series  under  our  eyes,  is  yet  in  its  measure  a 
literal  creation  of  God,  deriving  its  entire  actual  or  material 
substance,  no  less  than  its  real  or  spiritual  form,  from  his  sole 
and  active  perfection,  —  this  is  a  truth  of  which  none  of  us  have 
even  any  instinctual  suspicion,  much  less  any  intellectual  con- 
viction. 


144  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

Nevertheless,  if  we  would  maintain  in  good  faith  that  the  uni- 
verse of  existence  is  created,  this  is  the  intellectual  obligation  in- 
cumbent upon  us,  namely,  to  believe  in  creation  as  an  altogether 
vigorous  present  reality,  and  deny  its  retrospective  character, 
under  penalty  of  lapsing  into  a  childish  and  godless  pantheism.  A 
true  or  philosophic  doctrine  of  creation  imports  that  God  is  able 
to  bestow  spiritual  or  objective  and  unconscious  being  upon 
things,  only  by  giving  them  material  or  subjective  and  conscious 
existence  :  and  hence  binds  us  if  we  would  understand  creation 
save  in  a  superstitious  unworthy  manner,  to  cultivate  assiduously 
the  physical  and  moral  sciences,  or  the  study  of  nature  and 
history.  For  example  :  if  I  should  say  that  Grod  creates  the  rose, 
what  would  my  words  imply  to  a  philosophic  ear  ?  Clearly  no 
direct  or  outward  and  literal  action  on  God's  part  whereby  the 
rose  qua  rose  —  or  as  to  what  specifically  distinguishes  it  to 
man's  intelligence  from  cucumber,  cabbage,  and  all  other  forms 
of  existence  —  is  made  really  or  objectively  to  be;  but  rather  an 
indirect  or  inward  and  spiritual  passion  on  his  part,  whereby  the 
rose  qua  plant  —  or  as  to  what  generically  identifies  it  to  my 
intelligence  with  all  plant  life,  and  through  that  with  all  exist- 
ence—  is  made  subjectively  to  exist  or  appear.  The  rose  qua 
rose,  i.  e.  as  to  its  metaphysic  quality,  as  to  what  makes  it 
logically  appreciable  to  my  intelligence,  or  stamps  it  an  object 
of  human  affection  and  thought,  obviously  claims  to  exist  in 
itself,  claims  to  exist  absolutely,  and  so  far  manifestly  repugns 
creation.  If  then  I  still  insist  upon  proving  it  created,  I  can 
only  succeed  in  doing  so  by  showing  that  it  is  not  created 
directly  as  rose,  —  i.  e.  as  to  what  gives  it  metaphysic  quality, 
or  makes  it  specifically  and  absolutely  to  be  to  my  intelligence, 
—  but  only  indirectly  as  plant,  —  i.  e.  as  to  what  gives  it  phys- 
ical quantity,  or  makes  it  generically  exist  as  a  contingent  fact 
of  nature,  in  organized  subjection  to  the  laws  of  space  and 
time.* 

*  The  rose  qua  rose  has  no  existence  to  sensible  or  direct  intuition,  nor  yet  to 
scientific  or  reflective  observation,  but  only  to  conscious  or  living  perception,  whose 
proper  organ  is  faith.  For  sense  regards  only  what  is  exceptional  in  existence,  i.  e. 
divine  or  supernatural;  and  science  only  what  is  normal,  i.  e.  human  or  natural; 
while  faith  regards  only  what  is  spiritual  in  existence,  or  sees  the  exception  and 
the  rule,  the  divine  and  the  human,  the  infinite  and  the  finite,  the  absolute  and  the 
relative,  blent  in  the  unity  of  life.  In  its  mineral  or  inorganic  aspect  of  course  the 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  145 

Now  if  all  this  be  true,  if  it  be  true  that  the  creative  activ- 
ity properly  speaking  restricts  itself  to  what  is  public,  common, 
generic,  universal,  or  subjective  in  existence,  then  it  becomes  ob- 
vious to  the  least  reflection  that  the  creature  as  such  can  have 
no  pretension  to  moral,  but  only  and  at  most  to  physical  form ; 
i.  e.  a  form  in  which  the  generic  element  is  altogether  control- 
ling, and  the  specific  element  altogether  subservient  or  servile. 
I  do  not  say  that  moral  existence  may  not  supervene  to  the 
creature's  experience  upon  his  creation;  I  only  insist  that  it 
cannot  be  created.  For  moral  existence  is  not  simple  but  com- 
posite, the  moral  subject  being  both  objective  and  subjective  to 
himself,  or  claiming  to  be  self-conscious,  i.  e.  to  possess  a  selfhood 
distinct  from  all  other  existence,  and  hence  uncreated;  while 
physical  existence  is  simple  or  purely  subjective,  the  physical 
subject  not  being  his  own  object,  but  finding  his  proper  objectiv- 
ity outside  of  himself,  and  hence  without  self-consciousness :  the 
exact  distinction  between  the  two  being  that  in  physical  order 
the  generic  or  substantial  element,  i.  e.  what  gives  subjectivity, 
rules,  and  the  specific  or  formal  element,  i.  e.  what  gives  ob- 
jectivity, serves;  whereas  in  moral  order,  a  distinctively  con- 
verse state  of  things  obtains,  form  or  species  being  primary, 
substance  or  genus  altogether  secondary. 

We  may  say  then  without  fear  of  contradiction  that  the  sphere 
of  creation  is  identical  in  strict  philosophic  speech  with  the 
realm  of  physics,  and  excludes  moral  or  metaphysical  existence. 
In  other  words,  we  may  say  that  God  creates  the  homo  alone  ; 
that  is,  gives  being  to  man  only  in  physical  form,  or  in  min- 
eral, vegetable,  and  animal  proportions ;  this  limitation  moreover 
upon  the  created  nature  being  enforced  by  the  creative  perfec- 
tion. For  God  is  love  —  love  infinite  and  eternal,  as  knowing 
no  drawback  of  self-love  —  and  whatsoever  he  creates  or  gives 
being  to  consequently  cannot  help  turning  out  a  purely  sub- 
jective form  of  existence,  as  realizing  its  proper  life  in  the  uses 

rose  exists  to  sense,  whose  office  is  to  affirm  the  absolute  in  existence ;  and  qua 
plant  or  on  its  organic  side  it  exists  equally  of  course  to  science,  whose  office  is  to 
affirm  the  relative  in  existence.  But  qua  rose,  or  in  so  far  forth  as  it  is  itself  alone, 
characteristically  individualized  from  all  other  existence,  being  neither  mineral  nor 
vegetable,  neither  absolute  nor  relative,  but  the  living  unity  of  the  two,  it  exists 
only  to  life  or  consciousness,  and  is  affirmed  only  by  faith  which  is  the  organ  of  life 
or  consciousness.  It  is,  in  short,  a  mere  index  to  the  creative  logos. 
10 


146  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

it  promotes  to  something  beyond  itself.  But  a  purely  subjective 
form  of  existence  is  a  servile  or  impersonal  form,  being  destitute 
of  all  objective  accord  with,  or  intellection  of,  the  uses  it  pro- 
motes to  other  existence.  The  sphere  of  creation  properly 
speaking  claims  accordingly  to  be  rigidly  identical  with  the 
universe  of  nature,  inasmuch  as  natural  existence  of  whatever 
stripe,  mineral,  vegetable,  or  animal,  is  strictly  servile  or  im- 
personal, being  what  it  is  and  doing  what  it  does  in  spite  of 
itself,  or  without  its  own  rational  concurrence. 

Observe  well  what  has  just  been  said.  If  God  is  love  infinite 
and  eternal,  then  whatsoever  he  creates  or  gives  being  to  must 
image  this  spiritual  or  individual  perfection  of  his  only  in  a 
natural  or  universal  way,  by  avouching  itself  at  best  an  in- 
stinctual which  is  a  servile  and  lifeless  form  of  love,  exhibiting 
only  an  interested  subserviency  to  other  existence.  This  limi- 
tation is  obligatory  upon  the  creature  by  virtue  of  its  creation, 
which  is  its  essential  distinction  from  the  creator.  The  creator, 
being  by  the  hypothesis  of  creation  both  infinite  (as  having 
no  limitation  ab  intra)  and  absolute  (as  knowing  no  limitation 
db  extra),  is  the  one  individual,  while  the  creature,  being  by  the 
hypothesis  of  creation  finite  (as  self-limited,)  and  relative  (as 
limited  by  what  is  not-self),  is  the  one  universal,  i.  e.  the  many. 
Consequently  the  creature  must  be  in  himself  universality  with- 
out any  admixture  of  individuality,  since  otherwise  he  would 
be  un distinguishable  from  his  creative  source.  If  there  were 
the  least  flavor  of  individuality  attaching  to  his  universality,  he 
would  transcend  his  nature  as  a  creature,  or  put  on  moral 
lineaments;  for  moral  existence  is  not  created  but  begotten. 

But  universal  existence  —  existence  which  is  purely  generic 
or  subjective,  and  noway  specific  or  objective  —  is  simple,  and 
therefore  chaotic :  it  is  me  without  any  thee  or  him  to  finite  it, 
•or  render  it  morally  conscious.  Thus  the  homo  divinely  created 
(the  universal  man,  Adam  or  earth)  is  in  its  own  nature  a 
chaos,  and  only  by  regeneration  a  cosmos.  The  bare  fact  of 
its  creatureship  stamps  it  u  without  form  and  void,"  i.  e.  with- 
out human  or  moral  form,  and  void  of  rational  or  internal 
consciousness  ;  for  it  cannot  help  being  precisely  what  it  is, 
and  doing  precisely  what  it  does,  inasmuch  as  all  its  life  and 
action  are  imposed  upon  it  by  its  creation.  It  is  necessarily 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  147 

and  utterly  void  of  objective  worth  or  character,  —  doing  uses 
not  spontaneously  or  of  itself,  but  altogether  instinctively  or  of 
natural  constraint,  —  because,  being  a  created  existence,  the 
creator  is  everything  in  it  and  itself  nothing.  Hence  it  must 
forever  remain  a  mere  dead  or  stagnant  image  —  a  strictly  neg- 
ative or  inverse  correspondence  —  of  the  creative  perfection, 
unless  the  creative  resources  are  so  commanding  as  to  supply 
this  inherent  defect  of  the  created  nature,  and  convert  its  in- 
veterate death  into  exuberant  life,  by  begetting  a  vir  everyway 
answerable  to  the  immortal  want  of  the  homo,  or  bringing  forth 
a  human,  which  is  a  moral  or  individual  form,  everyway  com- 
mensurate with  the  universality  of  mineral,  vegetable,  and 
animal  existence. 

Thus  the  truth  of  creation  invincibly  implies  that  the  crea- 
ture bear  a  purely  formal  or  outward  and  objective  relation  to 
the  creator,  while  the  creator  sustains  a  strictly  substantial  or 
inward  and  subjective  relation  to  the  creature.  The  creator 
must  constitute  the  sole  and  total  subjectivity  of  the  creature, 
and  the  creature  in  its  turn  must  constitute  the  sole  and  total 
objectivity  of  the  creator.  No  doubt  that  creation  in  this  state 
of  things  will  wear  a  sufficiently  unhandsome  aspect,  inasmuch 
as  the  creature  will  lavishly  appropriate,  or  make  its  own,  what- 
soever it  finds  of  the  creative  personality  thus  invincibly  subject 
to  it.  But  its  action  in  that  case  will  be  simple,  not  composite; 
i.  e.  will  be  wholly  instinctual  or  fatal,  and  noway  moral,  ra- 
tional, or  free,  as  implying  any  consciousness  of  personality  on  its 
part,  or  any  sentiment  of  difference  between  it  and  the  creator. 
In  short,  the  creature,  qua  a  creature,  will  be  a  very  good  min- 
eral, vegetable,  or  even  animal  existence,  but  it  will  have  no  pre- 
tension to  the  human  form.  It  may  claim  mineral  body,  fixity, 
or  rest,  vegetable  growth,  and  animal  motion,  but  the  fact  of  its 
creatureship  must  always  inhibit  it  attaining  to  human,  which 
are  exclusively  moral  dimensions. 

We  have  the  amplest  warrant  then  to  deny  that  moral  exist- 
ence, or  human  nature,  is  included  in  creation  proper ;  to  deny 
that  man  is  God's  proper  creature  save  as  homo,  i.  e.  on  his 
organic,  passive,  unconscious  side,  in  which  he  is  physically  iden- 
tified with  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  existence ;  while  as 
vir9  i.  e.  on  his  free,  active,  or  self-conscious  side,  in  which  he  is 


148  THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

morally  individualized  from  all  other  existence,  he  is  manifestly 
the  only  begotten  son  of  God.  We  read  accordingly  in  the 
symbolic  Genesis,  that  while  all  lower  things  take  name  from 
man  (or  derive  their  quality  from  their  various  relation  to  the 
human  form),  man  himself  (Adam  or  the  homo)  remains  void 
of  self-consciousness,  void  of  moral  or  personal  quality,  remains 
in  short  wholly  unvivified  by  the  vir,  until  creation  itself  gives 
place  to  redemption,  or  nature  becomes  complicated  with  history, 
in  that  remarkable  divine  intervention  described  as  the  formation 
of  Eve  or  the  woman  out  of  the  man's  rib :  by  which  event  is 
symbolized  of  course  an  inward  or  spiritual  divine  fermentation 
in  man  which  issues  at  last  in  his  moral  consciousness,  or  his 
becoming  subjective  as  well  as  objective  to  himself.  The  entire 
mythical  history  amounts  in  philosophic  import  to  this :  that  the 
homo  or  physical  man,  divinely  created,  is  utterly  distinct  from 
the  vir  or  moral  man  divinely  begotten  out  of  the  other ;  hence 
that  humanity  could  never  have  attained  to  personal  conscious- 
ness, could  never  have  put  on  human  as  contradistinguished  from 
mere  animal  lineaments,  could  never  in  short  have  drawn  a 
breath  of  moral  or  rational  life,  unless  the  merciful  illusion  had 
been  granted  it  to  look  upon  itself  not  as  exclusively  objective  to 
God,  which  is  the  eternal  truth  of  things,  but  rather  as  exclu- 
sively subjective  to  him,  which  is  the  mere  fallacious  semblance 
of  things.  For  how  shall  created  existence  ever  be  properly 
subject  to  its  creator  ?  By  the  very  terms  of  the  proposition  its 
entire  subjectivity  resides  in  the  creator;  and  how  therefore 
shall  it  even  so  much  as  seem  to  be  subjective  to  him,  unless  he 
graciously  defer  to  its  deep  spiritual  necessities  by  becoming 
himself  formally  reproduced  within  the  created  nature,  or  put- 
ting on  finite  and  phenomenal  form  in  the  vir  ? 

The  interesting  question,  I  repeat,  then,  to  philosophy  is,  What 
is  the  method  of  this  hidden  or  spiritual  divine  operation  ?  How 
is  the  vir  (Eve)  actually  begotten  of  the  homo  (Adam)  ?  How 
is  moral  life  generated  of  mere  physical  existence  ?  How  does 
the  dull  opaque  earth  of  our  nature  become  translucent  with 
heavenly  radiance  ?  How  does  the  mere  natural  or  lifeless 
image  of  God  become  converted  into  his  spiritual  or  living  like- 
ness ?  How  does  God's  dumb  unconscious  creature  become 
glorified  into  his  conscious  son  ?  In  a  word,  how  does  the 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  149 

chaotic  darkness  which  invests  universal  nature,  mineral,  vege- 
table, and  animal,  become  gradually  lifted  or  effaced  in  the 
light,  order,  and  beauty  which  characterize  man's  individual 
intelligence  ?  For  it  is  only  Eve,  divinely  quickened^  who  brings 
the  carnal,  gross,  and  grovelling  Adam  to  final  and  adequate 
self-consciousness ;  only  the  vir  (the  private  specific  man)  who 
is  able  to  mirror  or  reproduce  the  homo  (the  public  generic 
man)  to  himself.  The  symbolic  Adam  is  "  in  a  deep  sleep," 
while  Eve  is  being  divinely  quickened  within  him.  He  has  no 
suspicion  that  she  is  formed  out  of  his  own  lifeless  clay ;  that 
she  is  only  his  own  relentless  unconscious  death  divinely  fash- 
ioned into  quasi  or  conscious  life  ;  that  she  is  but  the  phe- 
nomenal revelation  of  the  most  real  but  unrecognized  being 
which  he  himself  has  exclusively  in  God.  He  regards  her  on 
the  contrary  as  an  absolute  divine  benefaction,  cleaving  to  her  as 
flesh  of  his  flesh,  and  bone  of  his  bone,  and  betraying  no  mis- 
giving—  any  more  than  we  his  distant  descendants  do  at  this 
day  —  that  the  divinity  with  which  she  is  instinct  is  one  with 
his  own  base  flesh  and  blood,  or  inseparable  from  his  lowest 
mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  characteristics.  He  takes  it  for 
granted  indeed  —  just  as  we  his  unintelligent  offspring  have 
done  ever  since  —  that  the  selfhood  or  freedom  of  which  he  is 
made  sensibly  cognizant  in  the  person  of  the  woman,  is  an  un. 
conditional  divine  surrender  to  him,  is  its  own  all-sufficient  end, 
being  given  to  him  for  its  own  sake  exclusively,  and  with  no 
view  to  any  ulterior  spiritual  advantage.* 

Let  me  repeat  my  question  once  more  then.  How  does  this 
subjective  equation  of  the  creative  and  created  natures,  which  is 
implied  in  all  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  actually  come 
about?  Moral  existence  implies  such  a  literal  indistinction  of 
creator  and  creature  in  all  subjective  regards,  such  an  unstinted 
vivification  of  the  lower  nature  by  the  higher,  such  an  absolute 
identification  of  what  is  properly  infinite  in  creation  (substance) 
with  what  is  properly  finite  (form),  as  necessarily  makes  God 
and  man  convertible  quantities,  or  abases  the  divine  to  human, 
and  exalts  the  human  to  divine  proportions.  Our  intelligence 
consequently  brooks  no  arbitrary  refusal  in  its  research  after  the 
rationale  of  this  stupendous  creative  achievement.  It  is  the 
*  See  Appendix,  Note  F. 


150  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

urgent  insatiate  problem  both  of  the  world's  dawning  spiritual 
faith,  and  of  its  dawning  spiritual  science,  to  know  how  the  vir 
becomes  divinely  begotten  of  the  homo,  how  moral  life  is  bred 
of  physical  decay,  how  spirit  is  born  of  flesh,  or  nature  is 
quickened  out  of  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  into  human  or 
moral  form.  And  the  altogether  sufficing  solution,  as  it  seems 
to  me,  which  Swedenborg  gives  the  problem,  may  be  stated 
substantially  as  follows. 

The  vir  is  begotten  of  the  homo  (or  nature  becomes  spiritually 
vivified)  exclusively  through  the  instrumentality  of  conscience, 
which  is  a  living  though  tacit  divine  word  in  every  created 
bosom,  leading  it  to  aspire  only  after  infinite  knowledge.  Con- 
science does  not  give  this  counsel  to  the  homo  in  direct  or  explicit, 
but  only  in  indirect  or  implicit  terms.  Its  precept  is  negative,  not 
positive,  saying,  "  thou  shalt  not  eat  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil  (i.  e.  finite  knowledge),  for  in  the  day  thou 
eatest  thereof  thou  shalt  surely  die."  Two  trees  grow  in  the 
garden  of  the  created  intelligence,  which  cannot  be  eaten  of 
simultaneously  :  one  called  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil,  i.  e.  the  knowledge  of  the  finite,  whose  fruit  is  death ; 
the  other  the  tree  of  life,  i.  e.  the  knowledge  of  the  infinite, 
whose  fruit  is  immortal  life.  Or  to  drop  figurative  and  con- 
fine ourselves  to  scientific  speech,  there  are  two  sources  of 
knowledge  practicable  to  the  created  bosom  :  1.  Experience, 
which  gives  us  self-knowledge  ;  2.  Revelation,  which  gives 
us  divine  knowledge.  And  by  Adam's  being  told  "  that  he 
should  die  if  he  ate  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil,"  is  symbolized  that  law  of  human  destiny  which  makes 
the  seeming  life  but  most  lethal  death  we  encounter  in  our- 
selves, or  reap  from  our  physical  and  moral  experience,  alto- 
gether subordinate  and  ministerial  to  the  seeming  death  but 
most  vital  life  we  realize  in  God,  or  reap  from  our  spiritual  and 
historic  culture  —  from  our  social  and  aesthetic  regeneration. 

Conscience  in  its  literal  or  subjective  requirements  has  respect 
exclusively  to  the  homo  ;  and  it  is  only  as  a  spiritual  or  ob- 
jective administration  that  it  contemplates  the  vir.  It  is  to 
Adam  alone,  not  Eve,  that  the  prohibition  to  eat  of  the  tree 
of  knowledge  is  addressed ;  and  though  Eve  in  her  dialogue 
with  the  serpent  chooses  to  associate  herself  with  Adam  in  the 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  151 

prohibition,  and  even  superstitiously  aggravates  its  force  by 
alleging  that  they  were  forbidden  also  to  touch  the  tree,  the 
step  is  a  strictly  gratuitous  one  on  her  part,  having  no  other 
warrant  than  her  own  instinctive  identification  of  herself  with 
Adam.  The  reason  why  Adam  alone  is  forbidden  to  eat  of  the  tree 
of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil — in  other  and  less  figurative 
terms,  the  reason  why  conscience  as  a  letter  has  to  do  only  with 
the  animal,  and  not  with  the  moral  or  rational  man  —  is  very 
obvious.  It  is  that  Adam  is  the  abject  creature  of  God,  and 
hence  is  blindly  instinct  with  —  though  by  no  means  intelli- 
gently conscious  of —  the  creative  infinitude  or  perfection  ;  and 
to  suppose  him  therefore  u  eating  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil "  with  impunity,  i.  e.  finding  life  in  his  finite 
experience,  is  expressly  to  affront  and  mutilate  his  creatureship. 
Unquestionably  what  is  mere  "  instinct "  in  the  creature  will 
eventually  undergo  conversion  into  will  and  intelligence  ;  in 
other  words,  man  will  infallibly  outgrow  his  animal  conscious- 
ness, and  attain  at  length  to  truly  human  proportions,  when  he 
will  no  longer  blindly  or  instinctively,  but  freely  or  spontane- 
ously, react  to  the  creative  impulsion.  And  this  being  the  case, 
his  moral  or  rational  experience,  his  experience  of  selfhood  or 
freedom  (symbolized  by  Eve,  or  the  woman),  becomes  incident- 
ally inevitable,  because  his  free,  spontaneous,  or  spiritual  reac- 
tion towards  the  creator  is  rigidly  contingent  upon  such  experi- 
ence. But  it  is  strictly  incidental,  and  no  way  final,  its  total 
purpose  being  to  afford  the  creature  that  phenomenal  or  generic 
projection  from  God  which  alone  may  motive  his  subsequent 
real  or  specific  conjunction  with  him.  Conscience  is  the  verita- 
ble spirit  of  God  in  the  created  nature,  seeking  to  become  the  crea- 
ture's own  spirit;  and  it  can  only  do  this,  of  course,  in  so  far  as 
it  first  of  all  leads  the  creature  intelligently  to  apprehend  and 
appreciate  the  distance  between  God  and  himself;  between  in- 
finite love  and  wisdom  and  finite  affection  and  thought ;  between 
his  nature  and  his  culture  ;  between  his  inheritance  and  his  des- 
tiny ;  between  his  physical  and  his  moral  consciousness  ;  in 
short,  between  what  gives  him  objective  being  to  his  own  eyes  as 
homo,  and  what  gives  him  only  subjective  existence  or  appear- 
ance as  vir.  It  is  the  final,  not  the  immediate,  office  of  conscience 
to  reveal  man  to  himself  as  a  unit  of  two  forces,  one  infinite,  the 


152  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

other  finite ;  one  spiritual,  the  other  material ;  one  specific  or 
private,  the  other  generic  or  public ;  so  vindicating  at  last  the 
sole  and  supreme  truth  of  the  divine  natural  humanity.  Until 
this  great  end  is  fully  wrought  out, — i.  e.  so  long  as  the  truth 
of  the  divine  natural  humanity  remains  a  mere  letter  or  tradi- 
tion, and  is  not  spiritually  or  livingly  believed,  —  the  moral  or 
rational  man  seems  of  course  to  be  the  true  end  of  the  divine 
providence  upon  earth,  whereas  he  is  a  strictly  mediate  end  to 
the  evolution  of  society ;  and  all  sorts  of  reproach,  contumely,  and 
humiliation  consequently  attach  meanwhile  to  the  divine  name. 

Thus  we  must  not  for  a  moment  forget  that  selfhood  or  moral 
poise  has  a  purely  constitutional  and  by  no  means  a  causative 
efficacy  in  the  evolution  of  creation.  That  is  to  say,  it  is 
what  makes  the  creature  phenomenally  exist,  but  it  has  noth- 
ing directly  to  do  with  conferring  real  being  upon  him.  It 
gives  him  subjective  consciousness,  or  the  appearance  of  being 
to  himself;  but  it  is  very  far  indeed  from  constituting  his  ob- 
jective or  real  being  in  the  divine  sight.  For  the  creator 
alone  constitutes  the  being  of  the  creature ;  and  it  is  only  in  so 
far  as  he  ignores  the  creator  consequently,  that  the  creature 
attributes  being  to  himself.  Thus  the  creature's  self-knowledge 
or  subjective  consciousness  is  inexorably  conditioned  upon  his 
sheer  and  absolute  ignorance  of  the  creative  perfection  ;  i.  e.  of 
what  gives  him  objective  and  unconscious  being,  or  makes  him 
a  reality  to  God ;  what  we  call  his  selfhood  being  a  mere 
ratio  or  means  to  the  evolution  of  a  spiritual  life  in  him,  and 
having  absolutely  no  other  force.  By  the  sheer  fact  of  his 
creatureship  he  is  void  of  selfhood  or  moral  force,  void  of 
the  human  form  or  quality ;  and  yet  by  the  same  irresistible 
necessity  he  aspires  to  it  with  all  his  might.  For  how  un- 
worthy it  would  be  of  the  creative  infinitude  to  content  itself 
with  leaving  its  creature  a  mere  animate  existence,  utterly  in- 
capable of  private  or  interior  sympathy  with  itself  I  The  sole 
justification  of  the  creator  in  creating  —  i.  e.  in  vivifying  an 
inferior  and  opposite  form  of  existence  to  himself — flows  from 
the  hypothesis  that  he  is  infinite,  as  having  no  regard  to  himself 
in  creation  but  only  to  his  creature,  and  intending  to  exalt 
the  latter  to  the  plenary  fellowship  of  his  perfection.  None 
but  the  creator  knows  and,  knowing,  resents  the  limitations  of 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG  153 

the  created  nature.  None  but  he  knows  that  the  profoundest 
want  and  hence  the  controlling  love  of  the  creature  is  self- 
hood or  freedom,  and  that  to  expect  it  to  be  anything  or 
do  anything  incompatible  with  this  fundamental  want,  or  until 
its  love  of  self  is  fully  satisfied,  would  be  a  heartless  mock- 
ery of  its  constitutional  infirmity.  He  consequently  breathes 
in  the  Adamic  or  created  bosom  no  absolute,  but  an  altogether 
qualified  or  conditional  injunction,  designed  in  the  first  place 
to  keep  it  at  bottom  innocent  under  whatever  superficial  issues 
may  subsequently  arise  to  obscure  that  innocence,  and  in  the 
second  to  stimulate  and  fashion  in  it  the  precise  moral  or 
rational  consciousness  in  which  as  being  created  it  is  deficient. 
44  Thou  shalt  not  eat  of  the  tree,  etc.,  FOR  in  the  day  thou 
eatest  thereof  thou  shalt  surely  die."  Thus  while  conscience 
accommodates  its  utterances  with  the  utmost  strictness  to  the 
needs  of  the  created  nature,  or  makes  the  evolution  of  spiritual 
life  in  the  creature,  in  his  love  to  God  and  love  to  the  neighbor, 
rigidly  contingent  upon  his  amplest  previous  experience  and 
exhaustion  of  the  death  he  has  in  himself,  we  at  the  same 
time  learn  from  the  symbolic  narrative  that  this  death  which 
conscience  brings  to  light  in  man  is  no  vengeful  judgment  —  no 
unworthy  penal  infliction  —  on  the  part  of  God,  but  on  the  con- 
trary a  strictly  constitutional  incident,  or  physiological  necessity, 
of  our  immortal  spiritual  life.  For  is  not  Adam  represented  as 
saying  —  in  full  and  reverent  explanation  of  his  fall,  and  at  the 
same  time  in  full  and  reverent  attestation  of  his  faith  in  God  — 
the  woman  THOU  GAVEST  WITH  ME,  she  gave  me  of  the  tree,  and 
I  did  eat  ?  Could  anything  more  perfectly  avouch  his  in- 
tegrity so  far  as  any  real  or  spiritual  offence  towards  God  is 
implicated  in  the  transaction,  than  the  fact  that  he  was  led  to  do 
as  he  did  by  the  irresistible  influence  of  God's  own  best  gift 
to  him?  Accordingly  the  inspired  tradition,  though  it  repre- 
sents him  duly  incurring  the  death  denounced  upon  his  trans- 
gression—  that  death  to  our  instinctual  innocence  and  peace 
which  is  involved  in  every  breath  of  the  moral  or  voluntary 
consciousness  —  by  no  means  reports  him  as  having  become 
personally  obnoxious  to  the  divine  dislike.  The  serpent,  which 
in  symbolic  speech  denotes  the  senses,  is  cursed  above  all  cattle, 
that  is,  is  made  to  grovel  upon  the  earth,  because  it  misled  the 


154  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

woman ;  and  the  ground,  by  which  is  symbolized  man's  external 
life,  is  cursed  for  the  man's  sake;  the  symbolic  import  of  the 
otherwise  puerile  story  being,  that  men  should  be  led  betimes  by 
the  evils  which  beset  their  outward  life  inwardly  to  renounce 
their  physical  and  moral  genesis,  which  is  a  purely  phenomenal 
one,  and  cultivate  instead  their  social  and  aesthetic  aptitudes, 
which  alone  are  divinely  real.  But  neither  Adam  nor  Eve  is 
pictured  as  encountering  the  least  personal  inclemency  at  the 
hands  of  God.  So  far  is  this  from  being  the  case,  that  Eve, 
who  was  the  leader  in  the  transgression,  hears  a  gracious  prom- 
ise of  blessing  and  victory  made  in  behalf  of  her  prospective 
offspring. 

Conscience  then  is  the  sovereign  link  or  point  of  transition  for 
which  we  have  been  seeking  between  moral  and  physical  ex- 
istence. In  conscience  the  moral  which  is  the  individual  or 
differential  element  in  nature  becomes  disengaged  from  the 
physical,  which  is  its  strictly  universal  or  identical  element,  and 
the  conscious  vir  absorbs  the  unconscious  homo  in  his  deathless 
embrace,  never  henceforth  to  be  reproduced  save  in  the  spir- 
itual or  regenerate  lineaments  of  a  perfect  human  society. 
That  is  to  say,  nothing  is  really  universal  but  individuality  ; 
what  we  call  the  universal  element  in  nature,  meaning  thereby 
what  gives  genus  or  substance  to  things,  having  no  existence  in 
itself,  but  being  a  mere  implication  of  the  individual  element, 
which  gives  species  or  form :  just  as  the  viscera  of  the  body  and 
the  works  of  a  watch  have  no  existence  in  themselves,  or  apart 
from  the  forms  in  which  they  constitutionally  inhere.  In  other 
words,  the  creator  is  the  sole  reality  of  the  creature,  while  the 
creature  is  only  an  appearance  or  manifestation  of  that  reality ; 
and  as  the  creator  is  infinitely  individual  —  which  means  that  he 
is  individual  to  the  exclusion  of  universality  or  community  — 
so  consequently  what  we  without  misgiving  call  the  universe  of 
nature,  and  conceive  upon  the  testimony  of  our  senses  to  be 
absolute,  is  utterly  destitute  of  being,  and  confesses  itself  a  mere 
appanage  of  the  human  form.  In  the  infancy  of  the  human 
mind,  no  doubt  the  truth  seems  exactly  contrary  to  this.  So 
long  as  the  subjugation  of  nature  is  not  only  unachieved  but 
almost  unbegun — i.  e.  while  man's  spiritual  evolution  is  still  in 
abeyance  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  physical  and  moral  wants  — 


THE   SECKET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  155 

nature  seems  the  only  real,  and  man  a  strictly  contingent  exist- 
ence ;  man  himself  being  meanwhile  a  squalid  savage,  content 
to  live  in  abject  dependence  upon  nature's  caprice,  and  eke  out 
a  beggarly  subsistence-  upon  the  scraps  her  niggard  larder  affords 
him.  This,  however,  is  but  the  initiament  of  human  history. 
Man  can  afford  to  sink  his  foundations  very  low,  because  he  is 
destined  to  build  very  high  ;  destined,  in  fact,  eventually  to  house 
the  creative  infinitude  in  himself.  Infinite  love  and  wisdom  are 
his  source,  and  as  he  cannot  help  spiritually  returning  sooner  or 
later  to  his  source,  it  is  expedient  and  even  inevitable  that  his 
merely  natural  genesis  should  degrade  him  below  all  mineral, 
vegetable,  and  animal  possibilities,  degrade  him  in  short  to  hell, 
that  so  he  may  thence  more  efficiently  react  or  rebound  towards 
his  appropriate  spiritual  destiny.  Thus  no  matter  to  what  depths 
of  savageiy  his  native  instincts  of  infinitude  originally  incline 
him,  erelong  the  indwelling  though  unrecognized  divine  word  or 
logos  begins  to  inspire  his  consciousness,  and  lift  him  out  of 
ignorance  into  knowledge,  out  of  imbecility  into  wisdom,  out  of 
bondage  into  freedom,  out  of  penury  into  plenty. 

Undoubtedly  all  this  while  man  is  the  victim  of  a  stupendous 
though  most  merciful  illusion.  For  he  all  the  while  regards  him- 
self not  merely  as  consciously  or  phenomenally  disjoined  with 
God  by  nature,  but  as  really  or  absolutely  so,  and  hence  strives 
though  in  vain  to  conjoin  himself  anew  by  the  zealous  cultivation 
and  practice  of  virtue.  He  strives  in  vain,  because  virtue  in 
proportion  to  the  sharpness  of  its  aims,  and  the  earnestness  of  its 
aspirations,  shuts  the  votary  up  to  himself,  or  separates  him  from 
his  fellow,  while  all  the  resources  of  the  divine  providence  are 
leagued  to  break  down  human  isolation  or  selfishness,  and  exalt 
the  broadest  human  fellowship  to  its  place.  But  man  in  his 
moral  beginnings  has  no  intuition  of  this  truth.  The  beginnings 
of  conscience  in  us  invariably  exhibit  the  vir,  or  moral  and  con- 
scious subject,  freely  identifying  himself  with  the  finite  and  cre- 
ated side  of  things,  that  is,  with  the  homo  or  physical  and  uncon- 
scious man  \t~hy  desire  shall  be  to  thy  husband,  and  he  shall  rule 
over  thee],  while  he  recoils  at  the  same  time  in  abject  dread  and 
estrangement  from  the  spiritual  world,  or  the  infinite  and  crea- 
tive side  of  existence.  How,  indeed,  could  it  be  otherwise  ? 
How  is  it  possible  that  I,  when  all  my  feeling  and  knowledge 


156  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

stamp  me  to  my  own  perception  as  finite,  or  ally  me  exclusively 
with  nature,  should  ever  worthily  apprehend  my  invisible  spir- 
itual source,  ever  feel  myself  to  be  inwardly  enfranchised  of  God, 
ever  see  in  the  balanced  good  and  evil  of  the  moral  world  only 
a  stupendous  mask  of  the  creative  presence,  behind  which,  in 
silence  and  secrecy,  it  slowly  but  surely  builds  up  for  itself  a 
faultless  temple  of  inhabitation  in  our  nature  ?  The  thing  is 
manifestly  impossible.  My  physical  organization  itself  baffles 
every  such  conception  of  truth  on  my  part ;  for  isolating  me  as 
it  does  to  my  own  consciousness  from  all  other  men,  and  rele- 
gating me  to  the  perpetually  recurring  sway  of  my  finite  neces- 
sities, it  makes  the  rise  of  any  really  spiritual  or  divine  worth 
in  me  rigorously  attributable,  not  to  a  spontaneous  evolution  of 
my  nature,  but  to  the  exercise  of  a  more  or  less  severe  self-de- 
nial on  my  part.  And  self-denial  is  the  very  essence  of  virtue. 
Thus  to  all  the  extent  of  my  peculiar  virtus,  manhood,  or  moral 
consciousness,  I  of  necessity  antagonize  all  other  men,  deny  their 
fellowship  or  equality,  feel  my  self  to  be  at  essential  and  interne- 
cine odds  with  theirs,  in  short  proclaim  myself  an  utterly  unso- 
cial or  selfish  being ;  and  so  practically  refer  all  true  virtus  — 
all  real  manhood  —  to  a  divine  and  infinite  personality. 

Conscience  is  thus  the  true  and  living  matrix  in  which  the 
infinite  creative  substance  puts  on  finite  created  form.  All  the 
phenomena  of  our  moral  history  go  to  show  the  homo  or  created 
man,  the  man  of  interior  affection  and  thought,  utterly  uncon- 
scious of  the  infinite  goodness  and  truth  which  alone  give  him 
"being,  and  joyfully  allying  himself  with  the  vir  or  finite  conscious 
man^  the  man  of  mere  organic  appetite  and  passion,  who  gives 
him  contingent  existence  only,  or  renders  him  phenomenal  to 
himself;  shows  him,  as  the  symbolic  narrative  phrases  it,  ^''leav- 
ing his  father  and  mother,  and  cleaving  unto  his  wife  until  they 
become  one  flesh."  In  this  way  the  creature,  from  being  only 
physically  objective  to  the  creator  (as  the  clock  is  to  its  maker, 
or  the  statue  to  its  sculptor),  becomes  morally  subject  to  him  (as 
the  wife  is  to  the  husband,  or  the  child  to  the  parent)  ;  while 
the  creator,  in  his  turn,  from  being  literally  constitutional  to  the 
creature  (as  substance  is  to  form,  or  the  material  of  a  house  to 
the  house  itself),  becomes  spiritually  creative  of  it  (as  form  is 
creative  of  substance,  or  a  house  creative  of  its  material).  This 


THE  SECEET   OF   SWEDENBOEG.  157 

is  the  grand  secret  of  creation,  the  dense  and  otherwise  impene- 
trable mystery  of  our  nature  and  history,  that  a  certain  inver- 
sion is  divinely  operated  in  the  field  of  consciousness,  whereby 
the  homo  or  merely  created  man,  who  is  wholly  unconscious 
and  therefore  undistinguishable  from  his  creator,  being  a  mere 
universal  or  animal  and  passive  force,  becomes  taken  up  into  the 
vir,  or  puts  on  the  semblance  of  an  individual  or  moral  and  ac- 
tive force,  and  so  attains  to  self-consciousness  or  that  apparently 
absolute  projection  from  his  creative  source,  which  is  the  need- 
ful prerequisite  of  his  subsequent  spiritual  reaction  towards  it. 
And  conscience  is  the  dazzling  inscrutable  mask  under  which 
this  great  divine  operation  conceals  itself.  It  is  in  reality 
a  subtle  and  exquisite  mirror  wherein  all  the  imperfection 
inherent  in  the  abstract  unconscious  nature  of  the  creature,  or 
in  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  existence,  emerges,  i.  e. 
becomes  luminously  reproduced  or  reflected  in  his  concrete, 
conscious  self;  and  all  the  perfection  consequently  which  is 
inherent  in  his  creative  source  becomes  for  the  time  hopelessly 
immersed,  i.  e.  obscured  if  not  obliterated.  Please  observe  that 
there  is  nothing  arbitrary  in  the  inversion  thus  alleged  to  be 
wrought  in  conscience.  For  if,  as  we  have  seen,  the  vir  or  con- 
crete conscious  man  be  the  offspring  of  divine  or  infinite  power 
begotten  out  of  the  homo,  or  abstract  unconscious  human  nature, 
then  it  is  evident  to  a  glance  that  his  individuality  must  constitute 
an  exact  and  veritable  equation  of  these  unequal  factors :  i.  e.  must 
be  perfectly  commensurate  on  its  inward,  spiritual,  or  paternal 
side  with  all  the  resources  of  infinite  or  creative  love ;  and  on 
its  outward,  material,  or  maternal  side  with  all  the  defects  of 
mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal,  or  simply  created  existence: 
so  that  the  only  true  subject  of  conscience,  the  only  one  who 
really  fulfils  all  its  righteousness,  must  be  at  once  perfectly 
divine  and  perfectly  human  —  or  perfectly  infinite  and  perfectly 
finite  —  in  his  proper  person. 


XXIII. 

Let  me  here  observe  that  my  reader  would  greatly  mistake  the 
true  state  of  the  case,  if  he  should  suppose  me  animated  by  any 
personal  designs  towards  him;  if  he  should  suppose  me,  for 


158  THE  SECEET  OF  SWEDENBOKG. 

example,  aiming  to  convert  him  from  a  sceptical  to  a  believing 
state  of  mind.  I  have,  indeed,  far  too  much  reverence  for  the 
divine  prerogative  in  all  things  spiritual,  to  attempt  substituting 
my  own  foolish  reasonings  for  his  unerring  initiative.  I  have 
not  the  least  ambition  to  modify  my  reader's  religious  convic- 
tions, or  invade  in  any  manner  the  sacred  precincts  of  his 
heart.  My  aim  in  writing  is  exclusively  philosophic,  not 
religious.  It  is  not  to  persuade,  but  only  to  instruct.  I  would 
not  if  I  could  persuade  any  one  who  doubts  the  truth  of  creation 
to  believe  in  it,  because  I  am  sure  that  my  labor  would  be  soon 
undermined  in  that  case  by  the  hidden  currents  of  his  soul. 
But  I  have  a  great  desire  to  commend  this  truth  itself  to  men's 
speculative  regard,  that  they  may  know  both  what  is  philosophi- 
cally included  in  it,  and  what  is  philosophically  excluded  from  it, 
and  so  feel  themselves  at  perfect  liberty  thenceforth  to  obey 
their  hearts'  supreme  instincts  without  fear  or  favor.  To  this 
end,  and  this  end  solely,  I  have  shown  that  creation  deals  only 
with  universals,  or  stops  short  in  physics,  hence  that  man  on  his 
moral  or  distinctively  human  side  is  not  a  creature  of  God,  but 
a  son  spiritually  begotten,  and  that  the  method  of  his  generation 
is  identical  with  the  authority  of  conscience. 

But  here  let  us  be  frank  with  ourselves.  Such  extremely 
vague  notions  in  regard  to  the  nature  and  function  of  conscience 
are  unhappily  prevalent,  not  only  in  vulgar  but  in  technically 
enlightened  minds,  that  we  shall  hardly  be  able  to  proceed  a  step 
further,  intelligently,  without  some  preliminary  clearing  of  the 
way. 

Conscience  is  commonly  interpreted  as  a  divine  revelation  to 
the  intellect,  whereby  men  are  put  in  favorable  relation  to  truth 
or  moral  science.  That  is,  it  is  not  thought  to  possess  a  con- 
stitutive efficacy  with  respect  to  moral  existence,  but  only  a 
regulative  one.  Thus  it  is  by  no  means  commonly  reputed  to 
be  the  exclusive  organ  or  voucher  of  the  difference  which  all 
men  recognize  between  good  and  evil,  infinite  and  finite,  God 
and  man  ;  on  the  contrary,  this  difference  is  assumed  to  be  some- 
how absolute  and  eternal,  and  conscience  is  regarded  as  coming 
in  thereupon  merely  to  prescribe  the  duties  which  are  appropri- 
ate to  the  relation.  And  it  is  astonishing  to  observe  the  amount 
of  cleverness  men  sometimes  waste  in  attempting  to  demonstrate 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  159 

the  fallacy  of  this  alleged  revelation,  on  the  ground  that  some 
men  are  wont  to  deem  that  right  which  others  deem  wrong,  and 
that  wrong  which  others  deem  right.  I  say  this  cleverness  is 
wasted,  because  it  is  addressed  after  all  to  the  refutation  of  a 
false  theory  of  the  moral  instinct.  No  doubt  the  widest  diversi- 
ties of  opinion  and  practice  obtain  among  equally  conscientious 
races :  and  why  not  ?  For  conscience  was  never  intended  to 
operate  a  direct  restraint  either  upon  the  affections  or  the 
thoughts  of  men,  but  only  indirectly  upon  the  action  in  which 
affection  and  thought  legitimately  issue,  and  in  which  alone 
they  permanently  reside.  It  was  never  intended  to  produce  any 
uniformities  of  intellectual  culture  or  conventional  practice  among 
men,  but  only  to  avouch  the  human  principle  itself,  under  every 
contrasted  form  of  culture  and  practice,  by  sharply  discrimi- 
nating man  from  the  brute,  or  antagonizing  moral  and  physical 
existence.  It  was  intended  in  short  only  to  signalize  the  funda- 
mental discrepancy  which  exists  between  the  human  form  and 
all  lower  forms  of  life,  as  lying  in  the  absolute  right  of  property, 
or  exclusive  power  of  control,  which  every  man  as  man  attrib- 
utes to  himself  with  respect  to  his  own  action. 

Hence  if  men  had  not  conscience  —  i.  e.  if  they  had  no  inward 
perception  of  the  inexpugnable  difference  between  good  and  evil, 
high  and  low,  infinite  and  finite,  Crod  and  man,  which  is  exactly 
what  conscience  affirms,  and  is  all  that  it  affirms  —  they  would 
not  be  men,  but  animals,  inasmuch  as  they  would  be  no  longer 
masters,  but  slaves  of  their  organic  appetites  and  passions.  The 
distinctive  quality  of  manhood  lies  in  its  subject's  ability  to 
recognize  a  law  of  action  for  himself  superior  to  pleasure  and 
pain,  in  his  power  to  discern  a  good  more  intimate  than  any 
particular  gratification  of  his  appetites  and  passions,  and  an  evil 
more  poignant  than  any  particular  postponement  of  them.  And 
this  power  he  derives  exclusively  from  conscience,  i.  e.  from  a 
supreme  divine  presence,  or  living  divine  word,  in  his  soul,  affirm- 
ing the  inextinguishable  contrariety  of  good  and  evil.  Thus  the 
seat  of  conscience  is  neither  the  affections,  nor  the  intellect,  but 
the  life.  Its  primary  office  is  not  to  tell  us  what  is  good  and  true, 
or  teach  us  how  to  feel  and  think,  but  to  tell  us  what  is  evil  and 
false,  or  teach  us  what  to  avoid.  Its  aim,  in  a  word,  is  not  to 
regulate  our  opinions,  but  our  practice ;  not  to  mould  our  senti- 


160  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

ments,  but  our  lives.  Were  men  without  it  then,  they  would 
be  like  the  animals,  utterly  indifferent  to  the  quality  of  their  ac- 
tions. Manhood  is  not  primarily  physical  and  derivatively  moral. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  primarily  moral  and  only  derivatively  phys- 
ical. In  other  words,  my  action  is  not  mine  because  my  heart 
conceived,  and  my  thought  planned,  and  my  hand  executed  it : 
a  thousand  acts,  claiming  just  this  sort  of  affiliation  to  me,  I  daily 
loathe  and  disown :  but  simply  because  my  conscience  approves 
it ;  i.  e.  because  I  inwardly  feel  it  to  be  right  and  not  wrong  for 
me  to  have  done  it,  and  hence  gladly  identify  myself  with  it. 
It  is  childish  accordingly  to  attempt  discrediting  conscience  as  a 
divine  regimen,  merely  because  it  allows  and  even  authenticates 
the  most  contrarious  intellectual  judgments  among  men.  It  is 
an  instinct  of  the  soul,  not  an  intuition  of  the  reason,  much  less 
an  induction  of  the  understanding.  If  accordingly  the  sceptic, 
instead  of  pursuing  his  present  tactics,  would  seek  to  invalidate 
conscience  as  the  soul's  own  instinct  of  deity,  by  showing  that  it 
is  as  such  an  uncertain  light,  declaring  no  absolute  or  real,  but 
only  a  contingent  or  phenomenal  opposition  between  good  and 
evil,  between  God  and  man,  between  infinite  and  finite,  then  I 
admit  his  effort  would  be  more  reputable  in  point  of  logic,  but 
certainly  quite  as  fruitless  in  point  of  result.  For  conscience  is 
not  what  it  is  commonly  reputed  to  be,  a  mere  miraculous 
endowment  of  human  nature,  liable  therefore  to  all  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  men's  hereditary  temperament,  much  less  is  it  a  mere 
divine  trust  to  the  intellect  of  men,  liable,  therefore,  to  all  the 
vicissitudes  of  our  natural  genius  and  understanding.  On  the 
contrary,  and  in  truth,  it  is  the  divine  natural  humanity  itself ; 
and  its  light,  consequently,  is  as  clear  and  unflickering  as  that 
of  the  sun  at  noonday,  which  in  fact  is  but  the  servile  image  of 
its  uncreated  splendor. 

No  better  proof  can  be  desired  of  the  truth  here  alleged, 
namely,  that  conscience  masks  the  actual  divine  presence  itself 
in  human  nature,  than  the  fact  that  every  man  is  inexorably 
characterized  or  spiritually  individualized  by  it  to  his  own  per- 
ception. That  is  to  say,  every  man  unhesitatingly  pronounces 
himself  either  good  or  evil  relatively  to  all  other  men,  precisely 
as  he  obeys  or  disobeys  it.  And  certainly  no  law  has  power  to 
stamp  me,  a  free  subject,  good  or  evil  to  my  own  profoundest 


THE   SECKET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  161 

conviction,  unless  it  be  an  essentially  formative  law,  the  law  of 
my  very  being  or  form  as  man.  The  only  valid  natural  superiority 
I  can  claim  to  the  animal  lies  in  the  fact  that  I  have  conscience, 
and  he  has  not.  And  the  only  valid  moral  superiority  I  can  claim 
to  my  fellow-man  is,  that  I  am  more  hearty  in  my  allegiance  to  it, 
and  he  less  hearty.  Thus  deeper  than  my  intellect,  deeper  than 
my  heart,  deeper  in  fact  than  aught  and  all  that  I  recognize  as 
myself,  or  am  wont  to  call  emphatically  me,  is  this  dread  omnipo- 
tent power  of  conscience  which  now  soothes  me  with  the  voice, 
and  nurses  me  with  the  milk  of  its  tenderness,  as  the  mother 
soothes  and  nurses  her  child,  and  anon  scourges  me  with  the  lash 
of  its  indignation,  as  the  father  scourges  his  refractory  heir. 

But  this  is  only  telling  half  the  story.  It  is  very  true  that 
conscience  is  the  sole  arbiter  of  good  and  evil  to  man ;  and  that 
persons  of  a  literal  and  superficial  cast  of  mind  —  persons  of  a 
good  hereditary  temperament  —  may  easily  fancy  themselves  in 
spiritual  harmony  with  it,  or  persuade  themselves  and  others  that 
they  have  fully  satisfied  every  claim  of  its  righteousness.  But 
minds  of  a  deeper  quality  soon  begin  to  suspect  that  the  demands  of 
conscience  are  not  so  easily  satisfied,  soon  discover  in  fact  that  it 
is  a  ministration  of  death  exclusively,  and  not  of  life,  to  which 
they  are  abandoning  themselves.  For  what  conscience  inevitably 
teaches  all  its  earnest  adepts  erelong  is,  to  give  up  the  hopeless 
effort  to  reconcile  good  and  evil  in  their  own  practice,  and  learn 
to  identify  themselves,  on  the  contrary,  with  the  evil  principle 
alone,  while  they  assign  all  good  exclusively  to  God.  Thus  no 
man  of  a  sincere  and  honest  intellectual  make  has  ever  set  him- 
self seriously  to  cultivate  conscience  with  a  view  to  its  spiritual 
emoluments  —  i.  e.  with  a  view  to  placate  the  divine  righteous- 
ness —  without  speedily  discovering  that  every  such  hope  is 
illusory,  that  peace  flees  from  him  just  in  proportion  to  the  eager- 
ness with  which  he  covets  it.  In  other  words,  no  man,  not  a 
fool,  since  the  beginning  of  history,  has  ever  deliberately  set  him- 
self "  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil "  —  i.  e. 
to  prosecute  his  moral  instincts  until  he  should  become  inwardly 
assured  of  Grod's  personal  complacency  in  him  —  without  finding 
death  and  not  life  to  his  soul,  without  his  inward  and  spiritual 
obliquity  being  sooner  or  later  made  to  abound  in  the  exact  ratio 
of  his  moral  or  outward  rectitude.  I  have  no  idea,  of  course, 
11 


162  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

that  a  man  may  not  be  beguiled  by  the  insinuating  breath  of 
sense  into  believing  himself  spiritually  or  in  the  depths  just 
what  he  appears  to  be  morally  or  in  the  shallows.  Vast 
numbers  of  persons,  indeed,  are  to  be  found  in  every  community, 
who  —  having  as  yet  attained  to  no  spiritual  insight  or  under- 
standing—  are  entirely  content  with,  nay,  proud  of,  the  moral 
"  purple  and  fine  linen  "  with  which  they  are  daily  decked  out 
in  the  favorable  esteem  of  their  friends,  and  are  meanwhile  at 
hearty  peace  with  themselves.  All  this  in  fact  is  strictly  inevi- 
table to  our  native  and  cultivated  fatuity  in  spiritual  things  ;  but 
I  am  not  here  concerned  with  the  fact  in  the  way  either  of 
denial  or  of  confirmation.  What  I  here  mean  specifically  to  say 
is,  that  every  one  in  whom,  to  use  a  common  locution  of 
Swedenborg,  "  the  spiritual  degree  of  the  mind  has  been 
opened,"  finds  conscience  no  friend,  but  an  impassioned  foe  to 
his  moral  righteousness  or  complacency  in  himself,  and  hence  to 
his  personal  repose  in  God.  For  example :  conscience  limits 
my  self-love,  or  zeal  for  my  own  welfare,  to  a  just  or  equal  zeal 
for  the  welfare  of  my  fellow-men  ;  that  is  to  say,  it  suspends 
all  my  hope  of  personal  righteousness  upon  my  practically  de- 
ferring to  my  brother  to  such  an  extent  —  in  case  of  any  conflict 
between  us  —  as  that  the  interests  of  absolute  justice  be  promot- 
ed, if  need  be,  at  any  personal  cost  to  myself,  and  any  personal 
advantage  to  my  rival.  But  it  is  the  very  essence  of  self-love  to 
spurn  control,  and  make  one's  own  welfare  the  practical  measure 
of  the  welfare  of  other  men.  Hence,  and  of  necessity,  con- 
science wears  an  implacable  front  towards  the  vir  or  specific  in- 
terest in  humanity,  unless  the  latter  conciliate  it  by  freely  ac- 
cepting death  at  its  hands,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  studiously 
compelling  itself  into  all  manner  of  actual  conformity  to  the 
homo  or  generic  interest. 

A  living  death  then,  which  is  a  death  to  all  one's  distinctively 
personal  pretension,  is  the  sentence  which  conscience  enforces  in 
the  breast  of  every  child  of  Adam  who  attempts  seriously  to  ful- 
fil its  righteousness.  It  is  indeed  idle  to  conceive  that  any  mere 
child  of  Adam  should  ever  be  able,  while  the  world  stands,  pos- 
itively to  fulfil  the  law  of  conscience,  or  avouch  himself  a  true 
unit  of  the  divine  and  human  natures.  A  stream  cannot  mount 
above  its  source,  and  no  mere  creature  of  God  will  ever  be  able 


THE   SECERT   OF  SWEDENBORG.  163 

to  transcend  his  nature,  and  attain  to  God's  spiritual  sonship. 
Even  if  such  an  aspiration  were  possible  to  him,  it  would  be  de- 
feated by  its  own  genesis,  since  the  only  motive  it  could  attest 
on  his  part  would  be  an  unsocial  or  selfish  one,  consisting  in  the 
lust  of  personal  aggrandizement.  When  I  earnestly  aspire  to 
fulfil  the  divine  law  —  when  I  earnestly  strive  after  moral  or 
personal  excellence  —  my  aim  unquestionably  is  to  lift  myself 
above  the  level  of  human  nature,  or  attain  to  a  place  in  the 
divine  regard  unshared  by  the  average  of  my  kind ;  unshared 
by  the  liar,  the  thief,  the  adulterer,  the  murderer.  But  the 
same  law  which  discountenances  false-witness,  theft,  adultery, 
and  murder  binds  me  also  not  to  covet :  i.  e.  not  to  desire  for 
myself  what  other  men  do  not  enjoy :  so  that  the  law  which 
I  fondly  imagined  was  designed  to  give  me  life  turns  out  a 
subtle  ministry  of  death,  and  in  the  very  crisis  of  my  moral 
exaltation  fills  me  with  the  profoundest  spiritual  humiliation  and 
despair.  It  is  an  instinct  doubtless  of  the  divine  life  in  me  to 
hate  false-witness,  theft,  adultery,  and  murder,  and  actually  to 
avert  myself  from  these  evils  whenever  I  am  naturally  tempted 
to  do  them.  But  then  I  must  hate  them  for  their  own  sake, 
exclusively,  or  because  of  their  contrariety  to  infinite  good- 
ness and  truth,  and  not  with  a  base  view  to  tighten  my  hold 
upon  God's  personal  approbation.  I  grossly  pervert  the  spirit 
of  the  law,  and  betray  its  infinite  majesty  to  shame,  if  I  sup- 
pose it  capa'ble  of  ratifying  in  any  degree  my  private  and  per- 
sonal cupidity  towards  God,  or  lending  even  a  moment's  sanction 
to  the  altogether  frivolous  and  odious  separation  which  I  de- 
voutly hope  to  compass  between  myself  and  other  men  in  his 
sight.  The  spirit  of  the  law  is  love,  love  infinite  and  eternal ; 
and  it  consequently  laughs  my  personal  homage  to  scorn,  how- 
ever conventionally  faultless  it  may  be,  so  long  as  it  is  moved 
by  so  selfish  a  temper  on  my  part,  or  freely  imputes  to  him 
"  who  is  of  too  pure  eyes  to  behold  iniquity  "  the  meanest  of 
human  characteristics,  namely,  "a  respect  of  persons." 

It  must  be  abundantly  clear  by  this  time,  I  think,  that  con- 
science is  the  distinctive  badge  of  human  nature,  having  no 
manner  of  respect  to  any  man's  personal  virtue,  but  aiming,  on 
the  contrary,  to  inflame  and  nourish  in  every  bosom  the  human 
sentiment  exclusively,  the  sentiment  of  every  man's  invincible 


164  THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

solidarity  with  his  kind,  which  is  indeed  fatal  to  all  personal  pre- 
tension, whether  virtuous  or  vicious.  That  is  to  say,  conscience 
is  what  specifically  disengages  man  from  all  other  existence,  in 
spite  of  any  generic  complicity  with  such  existence  on  his  part ; 
and  it  is  what,  therefore,  generically  confounds  every  man  with 
every  other  man,  whatever  specific  diversity  may  exist  between 
them.  It  is,  on  the  one  hand,  the  true  logical  differentia,  or  point 
of  individuation,  between  man  and  animal ;  and  consequently  it 
is,  on  the  other  hand,  the  true  point  of  indifference,  indistinction, 
or  identification,  between  man  and  man.  In  short,  conscience 
characterizes  the  homo  or  generic  interest  in  humanity,  primarily, 
and  pays  only  an  incidental  regard  to  the  vir  or  specific  interest ; 
its  aspect  towards  the  former  being  altogether  positive  and  salu- 
tary, towards  the  latter  invariably  negative  and  disastrous. 

Now  what  is  the  meaning  of  this  great  fact  ?  Why  —  to  all  its 
sincere  or  qualified  experts  —  does  conscience  practically  turn 
out  this  inveterate  savor  of  death  unto  death,  rather  than  of 
life  unto  life  ?  In  other  words,  why  does  this  internecine  con- 
flict obtain  between  our  moral  interests  on  the  one  hand,  or 
the  life  we  apparently  possess  in  ourselves,  and  our  spiritual 
interests  on  the  other,  or  the  life  we  really  have  in  God? 

The  reason,  after  what  has  gone  before,  seems  hardly  to  need 
restatement,  being  found  exclusively  in  the  social  bearings  of 
conscience,  or  the  influence  it  exerts  upon  human  brotherhood, 
fellowship,  or  equality. 

The  entire  historic  function  of  conscience  has  been  to  operate 
an  effectual  check  upon  our  gigantic  natural  pride  and  cupidity 
in  spiritual  things,  by  avouching  a  total  contrariety  between 
God  and  ourselves,  so  long  as  we  remain  indifferent  to  the  truth 
of  our  essential  society,  fellowship,  or  equality  with  our  kind, 
and  are  moved  only  by  selfish  or  personal  considerations  in  the 
devout  overtures  we  make  to  the  divine  regard.  In  other 
words,  conscience  is  addressed  exclusively  to  the  purgation  of 
human  nature  itself,  and  its  consequent  thorough  reconciliation 
with  the  divine  nature  ;  and  it  pays  accordingly  no  manner  of 
obeisance  to  the  imbecile  claims  which  any  particular  subject  of 
that  nature  may  prefer  to  its  respect.  The  only  respect  it  ever 
pays  to  the  private  votary  is  to  convince  him  of  sin,  through  a 
previous  conviction  of  God's  wholly  impersonal  justice  or  right- 


THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG.  165 

eousness,  and  so  divorce  him  from  the  further  cultivation  of  a 
mercenary  piety,  while  leading  him  to  make  common  cause  with 
his  kind,  or  frankly  disavow  every  title  to  the  divine  esteem 
which  is  not  quite  equally  shared  by  publican  and  harlot.  We 
are  naturally  under  a  fatal  delusion  with  respect  both  to  God 
and  ourselves.  That  is  to  say,  our  sense  of  selfhood  is  so  abso- 
lute and  expansive  as  to  drown  our  judgment  of  spiritual  truth, 
or  lead  us  to  infer  that  our  being  is  not  only  apparently  but 
really  our  own,  whereas  in  truth  it  is  exclusively  God's  being 
in  our  nature.  Thus  my  senses  affirm  my  absoluteness,  and 
hence  leave  me  not  only  wholly  unconscious  but  even  wholly 
unsuspicious  of  the  divine  being  and  existence ;  so  that  I  am 
actually  shut  up  for  any  knowledge  I  may  claim  on  that  subject 
to  an  immemorial  tradition  zealously  cherished  by  my  race. 
Sense  has  of  course  no  cavil  to  allege  against  a  tradition  so  uni- 
versally respected  —  the  tradition  of  a  physical  and  moral  cre- 
ation of  God  which  took  place  "  once  upon  a  time,"  an  indefi- 
nite number  of  ages  ago.  On  the  contrary  it  stoutly  assumes 
the  truth  of  that  superstition,  and  in  doing  so  binds  the  mind 
to  infer  that  what  took  place  only  "  once,"  or  in  the  beginning 
of  history,  takes  place  no  longer,  but  that  men,  having  been 
supernaturally  created  at  the  start,  have  been  ever  since  and  at 
most  only  naturally  begotten  and  born :  so  that  God  no  longer 
stands  in  an  inward  or  spiritual  and  creative  relation  to  men,  as 
vivifying  their  very  nature,  but  only  in  an  outward  or  legal  and 
personal  relation  as  determined  by  the  relative  merits  and  de- 
merits of  their  petty  selves. 

Now  conscience  or  religion  is  the  divinely  appointed  men- 
struum of  our  purgation  from  this  sensuous  mental  captivity, 
and  our  consequent  eventual  edification  in  all  right  knowledge 
of  the  relation  between  man  and  God.  It  is  the  cherubic  sword 
which  flames  every  way  to  guard  the  mystic  "  tree  of  life  "  ;  or 
flashes  dismay  into  every  bosom  thus  persistently  mistaught  of 
sense,  and  fills  it  with  the  pungent  odor  of  mortality.  Religion, 
as  I  have  argued  on  a  previous  occasion,*  exerts,  rightly  under- 
stood, no  repressive,  but  a  purely  liberative  or  detergent  influ- 
ence upon  the  mind,  its  office  being  not  to  bind  but  to  unbind 

*  Substance  and  Shadow,  or  Morality  and  Religion  in  their  Relation  to  Life.     Sec- 
ond Edition.     Ticknor  and  Fields,  Boston.     1867. 


166  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

(re-ligare)  a  victim  already  fast  bound  in  the  fetters  of  sense. 
My  sensuous  reasonings  all  lead  me  to  suppose  that  there  is 
some  infallible  ratio  between  God  and  myself — some  middle- 
term  or  law  in  which  we  may  freely  coincide  or  become  one  — 
and  that  if  I  can  only  divine  this  ratio  and  faithfully  execute  its 
behests,  I  shall  be  sure  to  make  myself  a  partaker  of  the  divine 
life.  Now  religion  or  conscience  apparently  flatters  this  falla- 
cious prepossession  on  my  part,  but  only  that  it  may  the  more 
effectually  emancipate  me  from  it,  by  convincing  me  in  the  end 
that  no  such  ratio  or  law  is  possible  between  man  and  God. 
That  is  to  say,  it  first  conciliates  my  native  instincts  to  the  ex- 
tent of  giving  me  a  quasi  or  so-called  divine  law,  contained  in 
fleshly  ordinances,  and  suspending  my  life  upon  its  obedience  ; 
but  I  no  sooner  engage,  as  I  conceive,  in  its  hearty  service  than 
I  find  a  new  world  —  a  hitherto  unsuspected  social  or  spiritual 
realm  of  life  —  opening  up  within  me,  in  the  light  of  which  all 
my  nascent  laurels  turn  pale  and  die.  I  find  in  fact,  the  more 
honestly  I  endeavor  to  obey  the  divine  law,  that  a  totally  prior 
law  to  this  claims  my  allegiance — the  law  I  am  under  to  my 
own  race  or  nature  —  and  that  until  I  am  perfectly  absolved 
from  this  prior  and  profounder  law  it  will  be  idle  and  hopeless 
to  attempt  fulfilling  the  other.  The  mother  stands  in  a  much 
more  intimate  and  tender  relation  to  the  child  than  its  father 
does,  and  easily  attracts  a  love  and  reverence  from  it  which  the 
latter  is  totally  impotent  to  command.  Just  so  mother  Nature 
exerts  a  far  more  potent  sway  over  my  affections  than  father 
God ;  and  the  best  service  accordingly  which  this  quasi  divine 
law  does  me,  is  to  convince  me  of  this  necessary  but  hitherto 
unsuspected  truth,  and  so  prepare  me  betimes  for  a  plenary 
divine  descent  to  my  nature,  which  shall  enlarge  that  nature  to 
truly  infinite  dimensions,  and  consequently  fill  me  its  subject 
with  a  filial  feeling  towards  God  —  or  a  spontaneous  love  and 
worship  —  which  will  forever  do  away  with  the  thought  of  any 
paltry  legal  and* personal  relations  between  us. 

Thus  it  has  always  been  the  historic  function  of  conscience  to 
undermine  the  sensuous  and  merely  traditional  conceptions  we 
entertain  in  regard  to  our  God-ward  origin  and  destiny,  by 
gradually  convincing  us  that  neither  the  physical  nor  the  moral 
man,  neither  Adam  nor  Eve,  neither  the  homo  nor  the  vir,  has 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  167 

ever  had  any  just  claim  to  be  considered  God's  true  or  spiritual 
creation:  but  only  that  regenerate  social  and  aesthetic  man  in 
whom  Adam  and  Eve,  the  homo  and  the  vir,  the  physical  and 
the  moral  man,  are  freed  from  their  intrinsic  oppngnancy  — 
from  their  reciprocal  limitations  —  and  reproduced  in  perfect 
unity,  and  in  whom  alone  consequently  the  divine  and  the  hu- 
man natures  are  completely  reconciled.  Conscience  is  a  really 
divine  presence  in  our  nature  —  being  in  fact  its  sovereign 
though  latent  distinction  from  all  lower  natures  —  so  that  no 
mere  vir  can  ever  fulfil  its  righteous  exactions  save  by  spirit- 
ually exalting  himself  to  infinitude :  which  means,  enlarging 
himself  to  the  proportions  of  the  homo,  or  universalizing  his 
distinctively  personal  sympathies  and  aspirations  to  all  the  ex- 
tent of  man's  common  or  generic  want  towards  God.  In  other 
words,  no  one  who  seeks  to  appropriate  this  divine  life  in  our 
nature,  or  make  it  his  own  by  reproducing  its  righteousness, 
oan  ever  hope  to  succeed  save  in  so  far  as  he  exhibits  in  him- 
self a  virtue  every  way  identical  with  the  broadest  humanity, 
and  therefore  commensurate  with  the  divine  perfection :  save 
by  proving  himself  so  frankly  and  spontaneously  dead  to  every 
personal  hope  and  aspiration,  every  craving  after  mere  moral 
excellence,  in  short  every  inspiration  of  his  native  egotism  and 
vanity,  as  to  feel  absolutely  no  conflict  whatever  between  his 
private  interests  and  those  of  universal  man.  Conscience  an- 
nounces a  fundamental  discrepancy  between  our  private  and  our 
public  life,  i.  e.  a  deficient  social  force  in  our  nature  ;  and  as  the 
sole  end  or  sanction  of  discord  is  harmony,  so  accordingly  no 
one  can  pretend  to  harmonize  these  contrasted  spheres,  who  is 
lacking  above  all  things  on  the  private  side,  or  in  whom  the  sen- 
timent of  self  antagonizes  that  of  kind.  If  conscience  be  the 
veritable  door  of  immortal  life,  and  if  it  avouch  at  the  same 
time  a  fundamental  practical  antagonism  between  the  universal 
and  the  individual  interest  in  our  nature,  then  clearly  it 
must  prove  an  open  door  only  to  those  in  whom  this  antagonism 
has  been  actually  confronted  and  reconciled,  and  a  closed  door 
to  every  one  else. 

Scarcely  any  doubt  need  linger  now,  I  apprehend,  upon  the 
philosophic  import  of  conscience.  It  is  the  badge  of  human 
nature  itself,  considered  as  being  inwardly  qualified  or  quickened 


168  THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

by  God's  infinitude,  and  at  the  same  time  outwardly  quantified 
or  substantiated  by  any  amount  of  finite  limitation,  any  amount 
of  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  matter.  It  is  nothing  short 
of  ludicrous,  accordingly,  to  imagine  any  man  capable  of  fulfil- 
ling conscience,  or  the  creative  law  of  human  nature,  whose  per- 
sonality does  not  exhibit  a  perfect  reconciliation  of  its  opposing 
factors,  infinite  and  finite,  God  and  man,  a  perfect  harmony  or 
adjustment  of  its  twin  poles,  high  and  low,  good  and  evil. 
Whoso  fulfils  the  law  of  conscience  must  infallibly  present  in  his 
proper  person  that  rigorous  and  exact  equation  of  the  creative 
and  created  natures  which  all  its  righteousness  implies ;  and  he 
can  only  do  this  by,  first  of  all,  renouncing  his  personal  con 
sciousness  —  that  is  to  say,  whatsoever  specific  virtue  or  pride  of 
character  may  conventionally  approximate  him  more  closely  to 
God  than  other  men,  and  frankly  identifying  himself  in  sympa- 
thy and  aspiration  only  with  man's  generic  or  universal  want, 
the  want  in  which  all  men  are  one,  want  of  society,  fellowship, 
equality,  brotherhood.  The  law  is  meant  to  be  fulfilled  of 
course,  since  otherwise  human  nature,  or  the  human  race,  would 
confess  itself  a  failure ;  but,  in  the  nature  of  things,  it  can  only 
be  fulfilled  by  a  man  who,  being  in  thorough  sympathy,  on  the 
one  hand,  with  God's  infinite  majesty,  is  no  less  sympathetic  on 
the  other  with  man's  most  sordid  misery ;  or  who,  being  on  one 
hand  in  perfect  accord  with  God's  stainless  love  or  mercy,  is  on 
that  very  account  emphatically  able  to  justify  man's  most  abject 
natural  selfishness  and  worldliness.  Such  a  man  of  course  will 
be  qualified  to  fulfil  the  law  of  conscience,  but  he  will  do  so  only 
by  inwardly  disowning  all  that  exceptional  virtue  which  legally 
distinguishes  one  man  or  one  family  of  men  from  the  com- 
munion of  their  kind,  and  publicly  identifying  himself  with  what- 
soever normal  vice  and  unrighteousness  bind  them  to  it. 

Remember  that  conscience,  or  the  spiritual  creation,  is  a  unit. 
That  is  to  say,  the  two  factors  given  in  science  or  the  material 
creation  as  divided  —  God  and  man,  infinite  and  finite,  spirit  and 
flesh,  the  one  all  fulness  the  other  all  want  —  are  exhibited  in 
conscience,  or  the  spiritual  creation,  as  perfectly  reconciled,  mar- 
ried, put  at  one ;  while  in  the  material  creation  the  higher  fac- 
tor or  creative  element  is  held  in  invincible  subjection,  being 
bound  hand  and  foot  to  the  necessities  of  the  lower  or  created 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  169 

element.  The  palpable  logic  of  creation  —  considered  as  an 
exact  equation  between  the  creative  fulness  and  the  created 
want  —  is  that  the  former  be  utterly  swallowed  up  of  the  latter, 
or  actually  disappear  within  its  boundless  stomach.  In  other 
words,  in  order  to  the  creature  coming  to  self-consciousness,  or 
getting  projection  from  the  creator,  it  is  necessary  that  the  latter 
actually  pass  over  to  the  created  nature,  cheerfully  assume  and 
eternally  bear  the  lineaments  of  its  abysmal  destitution :  so  that 
practically,  or  in  its  initiament,  creation  takes  on  a  wholly  illu- 
sory aspect,  the  creature  alone  appearing,  and  the  creator  con- 
sequently reduced  to  actual  non-existence,  or  claiming  at  most  a 
traditional  recognition.  Now  conscience  —  regarded  as  the  law 
of  the  spiritual  creation,  or  of  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind 
—  corrects  this  fallacy  of  the  sensuous  understanding  in  us,  by 
convincing  us  that  this  is  only  the  true  and  inalienable  life  of  the 
creative  love  —  only  its  sublime  necessity,  so  to  speak  —  to  dis- 
appear within  the  precincts  of  the  created  consciousness,  or  freely 
abandon  itself  to  every  caprice  and  exaction  of  our  finite  nature, 
since  otherwise  the  creature  himself  could  never  come  to  con- 
sciousness, nor  present  consequently  any  natural  basis  for  his 
subsequent  spiritual  evolution  in  all  divine  perfection :  so  that 
what  we  call  nature,  and  suppose  to  be  absolutely  set  off  from 
the  creative  personality,  is  in  truth  or  at  bottom  only  the  crea- 
tor swamped  or  submerged  in  the  created  consciousness,  in  order 
thence  alone  to  effect  and  energize  the  spiritual  creation.  Of 
course  if  the  creator  should  really  exist  apart  from  or  out  of  re- 
lation to  the  created  nature  —  if,  in  other  words,  his  resources 
should  not  be  visibly  and  wholly  absorbed  in  the  created  con- 
sciousness —  then  it  would  be  impossible  to  conceive  of  the  crea- 
ture ever  coming  to  self-consciousness ;  for  he  is  only  by  virtue 
of  the  creator,  and  he  can  never  therefore  phenomenally  exist  or 
appear  to  hirriself,  but  by  the  creator's  perpetual  tacit  connivance 
and  assistance.  And  if  this  be  the  inflexible  logic  of  creation, 
it  is  perfectly  obvious  that  no  professing  subject  of  conscience 
can  legitimately  pretend  to  reproduce  its  righteousness,  save  by 
perfectly  reconciling  in  himself  these  phenomenally  divided  na- 
tures, or  crowning  man's  lowest  conventional  infamy  with  God's 
spotless  sanctity. 


170  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

XXIV. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  express  the  exquisite  peace  which 
flowed  into  my  intellect,  when  this  great  discovery  began  to 
shape  itself  out  of  the  multitudinous  but  accordant  details  of 
Swedenborg's  marvellous  yet  most  veracious  audita  et  visa.  If 
there  had  been  anything  habitually  unquestioned  to  my  convic- 
tion, it  was  the  indefeasible  sovereignty  of  conscience  on  the  one 
hand,  or  the  literal  finality  of  its  judgments  in  all  the  field  of  a 
man's  relations  to  God,  and  the  truth  on  the  other  hand  of  every 
man's  complete  personal  adequacy  to  all  the  demands  of  its 
righteousness,  provided  he  were  only  actuated  by  good-will ;  and 
I  spared  no  pains  accordingly  to  cultivate  such  good-will,  and  so 
conciliate  its  austere  regard.  I  never  questioned  the  absolute- 
ness of  all  the  data,  good  and  evil,  of  my  moral  experience.  I 
never  doubted  the  infinite  and  eternal  consequences  which 
seemed  to  me  to  be  wrapped  up  in  my  consciousness  of  person- 
ality, or  the  sentiment  I  habitually  cherished  of  my  individual 
relations  and  responsibility  to  God.  I  had  never,  to  my  own 
suspicion,  been  arrayed  in  any  overt  hostility  to  the  divine  name. 
On  the  contrary,  I  reckoned  myself  an  unaffected  friend  of  God, 
inasmuch  as  I  was  a  most  eager  and  conscientious  aspirant  after 
moral  perfection.  And  yet  the  total  unconscious  current  of  my 
religious  life  was  so  egotistic,  the  habitual  color  of  my  piety  was 
so  bronzed  by  an  inmost  selfishness  and  indifference  to  all  man- 
kind, save  in  so  far  as  my  action  towards  them  bore  upon  my 
own  salvation,  that  I  never  reflected  myself  to  myself,  never  was 
able  to  look  back  upon  any  chance  furrow  my  personality  had 
left  upon  the  sea  of  time,  without  a  shuddering  conviction  of  the 
abysses  of  spiritual  profligacy  over  which  I  perpetually  hovered, 
and  towards  which  I  incessantly  gravitated.  And  I  have  accord- 
ingly no  hesitation  in  expressing  my  firm  persuasion  that  noth- 
ing kept  me  in  this  state  of  things  from  lapsing  into  a  complete 
despair,  and  a  consequent  actual  loathing  and  hatred  of  the 
divine  name,  but  the  infinite  majesty  of  Christ ;  that  is  to  say, 
a  most  real  and  vital  divine  presence  in  my  nature  deeper  than 
my  self,  deeper  than  consciousness,  deeper  than  any  and  every 
fact  of  my  moral  or  personal  experience,  which  was  able,  there- 
fore, to  rebuke  and  control  even  the  pitiless  rancor  of  conscience 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  171 

itself,  and  say  with  authority  to  its  tumultuous  waves,  Peace,  be 
still  ! 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  I  had  any  clear  idea  of  this  truth  at 
the  time.  Familiar  as  my  intellect  had  always  been  with  the 
letter  of  revelation,  it  was  —  not  indeed  altogether,  but  —  com- 
paratively blind  to  its  spiritual  scope,  until  I  found  in  Sweden- 
borg  all  the  light  it  was  possible  to  crave  in  that  direction.  My 
traditional  faith  bound  me  to  look  upon  Christ  as  a  mere  suc- 
cedaneurn  to  Moses,  or  practically  subordinated  the  gospel  in  my 
estimation  to  the  law ;  so  that  the  only  use  I  ever  made  of  the 
Christian  facts  —  whenever  the  voice  of  conscience  was  loud  in 
my  bosom,  proclaiming  the  inextinguishable  difference  of  good 
and  evil,  or  God  and  man  —  was  to  worry  out  of  them  some 
more  or  less  plausible  pretext  of  consolation  against  the  wrath 
of  God,  still  presumably  impending  upon  all  manner  of  unright- 
eousness. I  do  not  think  I  overstate  my  intellectual  obligations 
to  Swedenborg,  when  I  say  that  his  spiritual  disclosures  put  an 
effectual  end  to  this  insane  worry  and  superstition  on  my  part 
forever.  For  these  disclosures  made  plain  to  my  understanding, 
what  the  Scriptures  themselves  had  long  before  made  plain  to 
my  heart,  namely,  that  the  law,  with  whatever  pomp  it  had  been 
sometimes  administered,  boasted  of  no  independent  worth,  that 
its  total  sanctity  lay  in  its  negatively  adumbrating  to  sense  a 
coming  righteousness  in  our  nature  so  truly  divine  or  infinite  as 
to  forbid  all  positive  anticipation  of  it  without  instant  wreck  to 
the  mind's  freedom.  Swedenborg  showed  me,  in  fact,  in  the 
discovery  he  for  the  first  time  makes  to  the  intellect  of  spiritual 
laws,  the  laws  of  the  divine  creation,  that  the  conception  of  law 
or  conscience  as  a  basis  of  intercourse  between  God  and  the  soul 
is  no  longer  tenable  in  philosophy,  but  must  give  place  at  once 
to  the  truth  of  a  present  or  actual  divine  life  in  the  very  heart 
of  human  nature.  He  shows  the  empire  of  law,  of  conscience, 
of  religion  in  human  affairs,  to  be  superseded  henceforth  by  the 
Christian  truth,  the  truth  of  God's  NATURAL  humanity,  and  he 
allows  the  soul  no  permanent  refuge  against  spiritual  illusion  and 
insanity  but  what  it  finds  in  that  supreme  verity.  What  ren- 
ders this  lapsed  regime  of  law  or  conscience  or  religion  spiritu- 
ally odious  and  intolerable  to  me,  is  that  it  proves  a  sheer  and 
invariable  ministration  of  death  to  all  my  personal  hopes  God- 


172  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.        s 

ward ;  it  proves  this,  and  cannot  help  proving  it,  because  its 
ends  are  primarily  public  or  universal,  and  mine  are  primarily 
private  or  individual.  What  I  crave  with  the  whole  bent  of  my 
nature  is  that  God  should  be  propitious  to  me  personally,  what- 
ever he  may  be  to  all  the  rest  of  mankind.  I  have  naturally  a 
supreme  regard  to  myself,  although  I  habitually  conceal  that 
fact  both  from  my  own  sight  and  that  of  other  people  under  a 
flowing  drapery  of  professional  benevolence ;  and  what  con- 
science or  the  law  —  regarded  as  a  literal  divine  administration 
—  does,  is  to  inflame  my  cupidity  towards  God  to  such  a  pitch, 
as  that  the  thick  scales  fall  at  last  from  my  eyes,  and  I  am  ready 
not  only  to  perceive  what  an  unclean  and  beggarly  lout  I  have 
always  spiritually  been  in  his  sight,  but  also  to  agree  that  it  were 
better  there  were  no  God  at  all,  than  that  he  should  be  capable 
of  lending  a  benignant  ear  to  my  hypocritical  or  dramatic  wor- 
ship. 

Understand  me  here,  I  beg.  I  have  not  the  least  idea  of  rep- 
resenting myself  as  ever  having  been  especially  obnoxious  to  the 
rebuke  of  conscience.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  willing  to  admit 
that  I  have  been  tolerably  blameless  in  all  the  literal  righteous- 
ness of  the  law.  It  is  probable,  no  doubt,  that  I  have  borne 
actual  false-witness  on  occasion,  or  committed  here  and  there 
actual  theft,  adultery,  and  murder.  I  am  not  in  the  least  inter- 
ested either  to  admit  or  deny  any  literal  imputations  of  this  sort. 
But  the  habitual  tenor  of  my  life  has  been  undeniably  contrary 
to  these  practices ;  and  it  is  only  in  my  spiritual  aspect  accord- 
ingly that  I  find  myself  a  reprobate.  For  example,  I  have  been 
living  all  my  days  in  great  comfort  and  plenty,  when  the  great 
mass  of  my  fellow-men  are  sunken  in  poverty,  and  all  the  ills 
physical  and  moral  which  poverty  is  sure  to  breed.  From  the 
day  of  my  birth  till  now  I  have  not  only  never  known  what  it 
was  to  have  had  an  honest  want,  a  want  of  my  nature,  ungrati- 
fied,  but  I  have  also  been  able  to  squander  upon  my  mere  fan- 
tastic want,  the  will  of  my  personal  caprice,  an  amount  of  sus- 
tenance equal  to  the  maintenance  of  a  virtuous  household.  And 
yet  thousands  of  persons  directly  about  me,  in  all  respects  my 
equals,  in  many  respects  my  superiors,  have  never  in  all  their 
lives  enjoyed  an  honest  meal,  an  honest  sleep,  an  honest  suit  of 
clothes,  save  at  the  expense  of  their  own  personal  toil,  or  that 


THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  173 

of  some  parent  or  child,  and  have  never  once  been  able  to  give 
the  reins  to  their  personal  caprice  without  an  ignominious  ex- 
posure to  severe  social  penalties.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  perfectly- 
just  that  I  should  be  conveniently  fed  and  lodged  and  clad,  and 
that  I  should  be  educated  out  of  my  native  ignorance  and  imbe- 
cility, because  these  enjoyments  on  my  part  imply  no  straitening 
of  any  other  man's  social  resources,  and  are  indeed  a  necessary 
condition  of  my  own  social  worth.  But  it  is  a  monstrous  affront 
to  the  divine  justice  or  righteousness,  that  I  should  be  guaran- 
teed, by  what  calls  itself  society,  a  life-long  career  of  luxury 
and  self-indulgence,  while  so  many  other  men  and  women  every 
way  my  equals,  in  many  ways  my  superiors,  go  all  their  days 
miserably  fed,  miserably  lodged,  miserably  clothed,  and  die  at 
last  in  the  same  ignorance  and  imbecility,  though  not,  alas  !  in 
the  same  innocence,  that  cradled  their  infancy.  It  is  our  wont, 
doubtless,  to  submit  more  or  less  cheerfully  to  this  unholy  social 
muddle  or  chaos,  and  many  of  us  indeed  are  to  be  found  rejoicing 
in  it  as  the  fit  opportunity  of  their  own  lawless  aggrandize- 
ment, material  and  moral.  But  be  assured  that  no  one,  be  he 
preacher  or  philosopher,  statesman  or  churchman,  poet  or  phi- 
lanthropist, artist  or  man  of  science,  can  reconcile  himself  in 
heart  to  it,  can  reflectively  justify  it  on  grounds  either  of  reason 
or  necessity,  either  of  principle  or  expediency,  without  ipso 
facto  turning  out  an  unconscious  but  most  real  abettor  of  spirit- 
ual wickedness  in  high  places,  and  reaping  a  spiritual  damnation 
so  deep  that  he  will  himself  be  the  very  last  to  feel  or  suspect 
its  reality. 

Now  I  had  long  felt  this  deep  spiritual  damnation  in  myself 
growing  out  of  an  outraged  and  insulted  divine  justice,  had 
long  been  pent  up  in  spirit  to  these  earthquake  mutterings  and 
menaces  of  a  violated  conscience,  without  seeing  any  clear  door 
of  escape  open  to  me.  That  is  to  say,  I  perceived  with  endless 
perspicacity  that  if  it  were  not  for  the  hand  of  God's  provi- 
dence visiting  with  constant  humiliation  and  blight  every  secret 
aspiration  of  my  pride  and  vanity,  I  should  be  more  than  any 
other  man  reconciled  to  the  existing  most  atrocious  state  of 
things.  I  knew  no  outward  want,  I  had  the  amplest  social  rec- 
ognition, I  enjoyed  the  converse  and  friendship  of  distinguished 
men,  I  floated  in  fact  on  a  sea  of  unrighteous  plenty,  and  I  was 


174  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

all  the  while  so  indifferent  if  not  inimical  in  heart  to  the  divine 
justice,  that  save  for  the  spiritual  terrors  it  ever  and  anon  sup- 
plied to  my  lethargic  sympathies,  to  my  swinish  ambition,  I 
should  have  dragged  out  all  my  days  in  that  complacent  sty,  nor 
have  ever  so  much  as  dreamed  that  the  outward  want  of  my  fel- 
lows —  their  want  with  respect  to  nature  and  society  —  was  in 
truth  but  the  visible  sign  and  fruit  of  my  own  truer  want,  my 
own  more  inward  destitution  with  respect  to  God.  Thus  my 
religious  conscience  was  one  of  poignant  misgiving  towards  God, 
if  not  of  complete  practical  separation,  and  it  filled  my  intellect 
with  all  manner  of  perplexed  speculation  and  gloomy  forebod- 
ing. Do  what  I  might  I  never  could  attain  to  the  least  religious 
self-complacency,  or  push  my  devout  instincts  to  the  point  of  ac- 
tual fanaticism.  Do  what  I  would  I  could  never  succeed  in  per- 
suading myself  that  God  almighty  cared  a  jot  for  me  in  my 
personal  capacity,  i.  e.  as  I  stood  morally  individualized  from,  or 
consciously  antagonized  with,  my  kind  ;  and  yet  this  was  the 
identical  spiritual  obligation  imposed  upon  me  by  the  church. 
Time  and  again  I  consulted  my  spiritual  advisers  to  know  how  it 
might  do  for  me  to  abandon  myself  to  the  simple  joy  of  the 
truth  as  it  was  in  Christ,  without  taking  any  thought  for.  the 
church,  ,or  the  interests  of  my  religious  character.  And  they 
always  told  me  that  it  would  not  do  at  all ;  that  my  church  sym- 
pathies, or  the  demands  of  my  religious  character,  were  every- 
thing comparatively,  and  my  mere  belief  in  Christ  comparatively 
nothing,  since  devils  believed  just  as  much  as  I  did.  The  re- 
tort was  as  apt  as  it  was  obvious,  that  the  devils  believed  and 
trembled,  while  I  believed  and  rejoiced  ;  and  that  this  joy  on  my 
part  could  not  be  helped,  but  only  hindered,  whenever  it  was 
allowed  to  be  complicated  with  any  question  about  myself.  But 
no :  the  evidently  foregone  conclusion  to  be  forced  upon  me  in 
every  case  was,  that  a  man's  religious  standing,  or  the  love  he 
bears  the  church,  takes  the  place,  under  the  gospel,  of  his  moral 
standing,  or  the  love  he  bore  the  state,  under  the  law ;  hence 
that  no  amount  of  delight  in  the  truth,  for  the  truth's  sake 
alone,  could  avail  me  spiritually,  unless  it  were  associated  with 
a  scrupulous  regard  for  a  sanctified  public  opinion. 

Imagine,  then,  my  glad  surprise,  my  cordial  relief,  when  in 
this  state  of  robust  religious  nakedness,  with  no  wretchedest  fig- 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  175 

leaf  of  ecclesiastical  finery  to  cover  me  from  the  divine  inclem- 
ency, I  caught  my  first  glimpse  of  the  spiritual  contents  of  rev- 
elation, or  discerned  the  profoundly  philosophic  scope  of  the 
Christian  truth.  This  truth  at  once  emboldened  me  to  obey  my 
own  regenerate  intellectual  instincts  without  further  parley,  in 
throwing  the  church  overboard,  or  demitting  all  care  of  my  re- 
ligious character  to  the  devil,  of  whom  alone  such  care  is  an  in- 
spiration. The  Christian  truth  indeed  —  which  is  the  truth  of 
God's  incarnation  in  our  nature,  and  hence  of  the  ineffable 
divine  sanctity  of  our  natural  bodies,  not  only  in  all  the  compass 
of  their  appetites  and  passions,  but  down  even  to  their  literal 
flesh  and  bones  —  teaches  me  to  look  upon  the  church's  hearti- 
est malison  as  God's  heartiest  benison,  inasmuch  as  whatsoever 
is  most  highly  esteemed  among  men  —  namely,  that  private  or 
personal  righteousness  in  man,  of  which  the  church  is  the  spe- 
cial protagonist  and  voucher  —  is  abomination  to  God.  The 
church  maintains  a  jealous  profession  of  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
and  fills  the  earth  with  the  most  artfully  reiterate  and  melodious 
invocation  of  his  name  ;  but  when  it  comes  "practically  to  inter- 
pret this  divinity,  and  apply  it  to  men's  living  needs,  the  result 
turns  out  a  contemptible  quackery,  inasmuch  as  this  alleged 
union  of  the  divine  and  human  natures  endows  us  helpless  par- 
takers of  the  latter  nature  with  no  privilege  towards  God,  but 
leaves  us,  unless  we  are  consecrated  by  some  absurd  ecclesiasti- 
cal usage,  as  far  off  from  the  sheltering  divine  arms,  as  any 
worshipper  of  Jupiter  or  the  Syrian  Astarte.  Revelation,  on  the 
contrary,  teaches  me  that  Christ's  divinity  is  an  utterly  insane 
pretension,  in  so  far  as  it  implies  any  personal  antagonism  on  his 
part  with  the  rest  of  mankind,  or  claims  to  have  been  exerted 
on  his  own  proper  behalf,  and  not.cn  behalf  exclusively  of  uni- 
versal man,  good  and  evil,  wise  and  simple,  clean  and  unclean. 
In  other  words,  spiritual  Christianity  means  the  complete  secu- 
larization of  the  divine  name,  or  its  identification  henceforth  only 
with  man's  common  or  natural  want,  that  want  in  which  all  men 
are  absolutely  one,  and  its  consequent  utter  estrangement  from 
the  sphere  of  his  private  or  personal  fulness,  in  which  every 
man  is  consciously  divided  from  his  neighbor:  so  that  I  may 
never  aspire  to  the  divine  favor,  and  scarcely  to  the  divine  toler- 
ance, save  in  my  social  or  redeemed  natural  aspect ;  i.  e.  as  I 


176  THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

stand  morally  identified  with  the  vast  community  of  men  of 
whatever  race  or  religion,  cultivating  no  consciousness  of  antag- 
onist interests  to  any  other  man,  but  on  the  contrary  frankly 
disowning  every  personal  hope  towards  God  which  does  not  flow 
exclusively  from  his  redemption  of  human  nature,  or  is  not 
based  purely  and  simply  upon  his  indiscriminate  love  to  the 
race. 

Such,  as  I  have  been  able  to  apprehend  it,  is  the  intellectual 
secret  of  Swedenborg ;  such  the  calm,  translucent  depths  of 
meaning  that  underlie  the  tormented  surface  of  explication  he 
puts  upon  the  spiritual  sense  of  scripture.  In  spite  of  my  rev- 
erence for  the  Christian  letter,  perhaps  to  a  great  extent  be- 
cause of  it,  I  had  never  enjoyed  the  least  rational  insight  into 
the  principles  of  the  world's  spiritual  administration,  until  I 
encountered  this  naive,  uncouth,  and  unexampled  literature,  and 
caught  therein,  as  I  say,  my  first  clear  glimpse  of  the  vast  intel- 
lectual wealth  stored  up  in  its  new  philosophy  of  nature,  or  its 
doctrine  of  the  divine  natural  humanity.  The  obvious  disquali- 
fication of  my  intellect,  no  doubt,  spiritually  viewed,  lay  in  my 
habitually  identifying  nature,  to  my  own  thought,  with  the  cre- 
ated rather  than  the  creative  personality.  That  is  to  say,  inas- 
much as  the  creature  to  my  sensuous  imagination  appeared  to 
exist  absolutely  or  in  himself,  and  not  exclusively  in  and  by  the 
creator,  I  could  not  logically  help  making  him  responsible  for  his 
nature,  or  whatsoever  is  legitimately  involved  in  himself.  By  the 
nature  of  a  thing  wre  mean  whatsoever  the  thing  is  in  itself,  and 
apart  from  foreign  interference  ;  and  so  long  consequently  as  we 
ascribe  real  and  not  mere  phenomenal  personality  or  character 
to  the  creature,  we  cannot  possibly  help  saddling  him  with  the 
responsibility  of  his  own  nature.  The  only  way  to  evade  this 
necessity  is  to  deny  him  all  real,  and  allow  him  a  purely  phenom- 
enal, existence,  by  making  his  actual  life  or  being  to  inhere,  not  in 
himself,  but  exclusively  in  his  creator.  But  who,  before  Sweden- 
borg, ever  dreamt  of  such  a  thing?  The  moral  pretension  in 
existence  has  always  been  regarded  outside  of  the  church  as  alto- 
gether absolute  and  unquestionable ;  and  inside  the  church  no 
machinery  exists  for  its  confutation  or  exhaustion,  but  the  two 
initiatory  rites  of  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper,  upon  which 
alone  the  church  was  founded:  the  one  rite  inferring  its  sub- 


THE  SECKET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  177 

ject's  complete  purgation  from  any  amount  of  moral  defilement 
his  conscience  may  have  contracted,  the  other  his  consequent 
free  impletion  with  any  amount  of  spiritual  divine  good. 

No  more  than  any  one  else,  however,  had  I  compassed  the 
least  spiritual  apprehension  of  the  church,  or  divined  save  in 
the  dimmest  manner  the  endless  philosophic  substance  wrapped 
up  in  its  two  constitutive  ordinances.  Thus,  although  I  ren- 
dered faultless  ceremonial  homage  in  my  soul  to  the  supreme 
lordship  of  Christ  (as  traditional  God-man,  or  God  in  our  na- 
ture), I  yet  all  the  while  had  no  distinct  conception  that  the 
divinity  thus  ascribed  to  him  implied  any  really  creative  or  com- 
prehensive relation  on  his  part  to  our  immortal  destiny.  In  fact 
I  utterly  ignored  his  pretension  to  constitute  an  utterly  new  and 
final  —  because  spiritual  —  divine  advent  upon  earth,  nor  ever 
for  a  moment  therefore  supposed  it  to  be  pregnant  with  hostility 
and  disaster  to  all  that  our  natural  understanding  has  been  went 
to  conceive  of  under  the  name  of  God,  and  our  natural  heart 
has  been  wont  dramatically  to  worship  under  that  specious  and 
grandiose  appellation.  Along  with  the  entire  Christian  world, 
on  the  contrary,  I  always  conceived  of  Christ's  divinity  as  a.n 
eminently  personal  and  restrictive  one,  based  upon  his  conceded 
moral  superiority  to  all  mankind,  whereas  in  truth  it  is  a  purely 
spiritual  or  impersonal  one,  based  upon  his  actual  and  undis- 
guised moral  inferiority  to  the  lowest  rubbish  of  human  kind 
that  faithfully  dogged  his  footsteps,  and  hung  enchanted  upon 
his  lips. 

The  world  has  had  gods  many  and  lords  many,  but  they  are 
one  and  all  eternally  superseded  and  set  at  naught  by  the  chris- 
tian  revelation  of  the  divine  name  as  being  essentially  inimical 
and  repugnant  to  the  moral  hypothesis  of  creation,  or  the  exist- 
ence of  any  personal  relations  between  the  soul  and  God.  It  is 
true  that  the  Christian  church  has  never  been  just  to  the  idea 
of  its  founder,  has  been  indeed  anything  but  just  to  the  alto- 
gether spiritual  doctrine  of  the  divine  name  he  confided  to  it. 
From  the  day  of  the  apostle  John's  decease  down  to  that  of 
our  modern  transcendentalism,  a  midnight  darkness  has  rested 
upon  the  human  mind  in  regard  to  spiritual  things  —  a  darkness 
so  palpable  at  last,  so  utterly  unrelieved  by  any  feeblest  star- 
shine  of  faith  or  knowledge,  that  a  church  has  recently  set  itself 
12 


178  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG. 

up  among  us  which  claims  to  be  nothing  if  not  spiritual,  and  yet, 
forsooth,  excludes  Christ  from  a  primacy  in  its  regard,  because 
it  can  get  no  conclusive  proof  of  his  having  been  morally  or  per- 
sonally  superior  to  certain  other  great  men,  of  whom  history 
preserves  a  memorial !  This  indeed  has  been  the  animus  of  the 
church  throughout  history,  to  naturalize  rather  than  spiritualize, 
—  to  moralize  rather  than  humanize,  —  the  creative  name,  by 
identifying  it  with  certain  personal  interests  in  humanity  rather 
than  those  of  universal  man ;  by  showing  it  instinct  in  short  with 
a  sectarian  or  selfish  rather  than  a  social  or  loving  temper.  It 
could  not  possibly  have  done  otherwise  in  fact,  without  violating 
its  function  as  a  literal  or  a  ritual  economy,  which  has  always 
been  to  represent  or  embody  in  itself  the  instincts  of  the  purely 
natural  mind,  of  the  strictly  unregenerate  heart,  towards  God. 

The  church  has  thus  spiritually  or  unconsciously  crucified  the 
divine  name,  while  intending  literally  or  consciously  to  hallow  it. 
For  no  man  by  nature  has  any  other  idea  of  God  than  that  of  an  al- 
mighty and  irresponsible  being  creating  all  things  —  not  out  of  his 
own  infinite  love  and  wisdom  yearning  to  communicate  their  own 
potencies  and  felicities  to  whatsoever  is  simply  not  themselves  — 
but  out  of  stark  and  veritable  naught,  and  merely  to  subserve  his 
own  personal  pleasure,  his  own  selfish  and  vainglorious  renown. 
The  conception  we  naturally  cherish  of  God  in  his  creative  aspect 
is  that  of  an  unprincipled  but  omnipotent  conjuror  or  magician, 
who  is  able  to  create  things  —  i.  e.  to  make  them  be  absolutely 
or  in  themselves,  and  irrespectively  of  other  things  —  by  simply 
willing  them  to  be ;  and  to  unmake  them  therefore,  if  they  do 
not  happen  to  suit  his  whim,  just  as  jauntily  as  he  has  made  them. 
Now  there  is  no  such  unprincipled  and  almighty  power  as  this, 
nor  any  semblance  of  such  a  power,  on  the  hither  side  of  hell. 
And  the  church,  accordingly,  by  massing  or  embodying  in  its  own 
distinctive  formulas  this  superstition  of  the  carnal  heart,  and 
affording  it  a  quasi  divine  authentication,  only  succeeds  in  fur- 
nishing the  creative  spirit  in  our  nature  the  very  imprisonment 
or  appropriation  it  needs— the  identical  crucifixion  or  assimilation 
it  demands — in  order  finally  to  transfuse  our  natural  veins  with 
the  blood  of  its  own  resurgent  and  incorruptible  life.  But  in 
spite  of  all  this  —  in  spite  of  the  church's  owning  only  a  negative 
worth,  only  a  representative  sanctity — we  cannot  too  gratefully 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  179 

appreciate  its  proper  historic  use,  which  has  been  to  induct  the 
common  mind  into  a  gladsome  recognition  of  God's  NATURAL 
HUMANITY,  by  gradually  disgusting  or  fatiguing  it  with  the  con- 
ception of  an  abstract  —  i.  e.  an  idle,  unemployed,  or  unrelated 
—  divine  force  in  the  world. 

Deism,  as  a  philosophic  doctrine,  enjoys  only  a  starveling  exist- 
ence. To  be  sure,  nothing  is  more  congruous  with  the  unculti- 
vated instincts  of  the  heart,  than  the  conception  of  a  self-involved 
or  self-contained  deity,  —  a  deity  who  is  essentially  sufficient  unto 
himself,  and  who  is  therefore  a  standing  discredit,  reproach,  and 
menace  to  whatsoever  is  not  himself.  For  we  who  are  by  na- 
ture finite  and  relative  can  contrive  no  other  way  of  honoring 
God  than  by  making  him  intensely  opposite  to  ourselves,  or 
projecting  him  in  imagination  as  far  as  possible  from  our  personal 
limitations,  from  our  own  finite  experience.  We  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  attribute  simple  or  absolute  —  which  is  sheerly  idiotic  — 
existence  to  him,  an  existence-in-himself,  or  before  the  world  was, 
and  utterly  irrelative  to  his  creature ;  we  endow  him  with  all 
manner  of  passive  personal  perfection,  such  as  infinitude  of  space 
and  eternity  of  time  ;  and  by  way  of  conclusively  establishing  his 
subjection  to  nature,  while  at  the  same  time  avouching  his  per- 
sonal superiority  to  ourselves,  we  call  him  omniscient,  omnipres- 
ent, and  omnipotent,  or  suppose  him  literally  cognizant  of  every 
event  in  time,  literally  present  in  every  inch  of  space,  and  literal- 
ly doing  whatsoever  he  pleases,  while  we  do  only  what  we  can. 
No  doubt  this  proceeding  is  none  the  less  useful  for  being  inevi- 
table on  our  part.  No  doubt  we  thus  adequately  objectify 
the  divine  being  to  our  regard,  or  get  him  into  conditions  at 
once  of  such  generic  nearness  to  us,  and  at  the  same  time  of  such 
specific  remoteness,  as  to  constitute  a  very  fair  basis  of  evolution 
to  any  subsequent  spiritual  intercourse  which  may  take  place 
between  us.  But  this  is  the  sole  justification  we  can  allege  of 
the  devout  natural  habit  in  question.  For  God  has  really  no 
absolute  but  only  a  relative  perfection,  no  passive  but  a  purely 
active  infinitude.  His  perfection  is  no  way  literal,  but  a  strictly 
spiritual  or  creative  one,  being  entirely  inseparable  save  in 
thought  from  the  work  of  his  hands ;  his  infinitude  a  wholly  act- 
ual or  living  one,  standing  in  his  free  communication,  or  sponta- 
neous abandonment,  of  himself  to  whatsoever  is  not  himself.  He 


180  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

has  in  truth  no  absolute  or  personal  and  passive  worth,  such  as 
we  ourselves  covet  under  the  name  of  virtue  ;  no  claim  upon  our 
regard  but  a  working  claim ;  a  claim  founded  not  upon  what  he 
is  in  himself,  but  upon  what  he  is  relatively  to  others.  Our  na- 
tive ignorance  of  divine  things  to  be  sure  is  so  dense,  that  we 
cannot  help  according  him  a  blind  and  superstitious  worship  for 
what  he  presumably  is  before  creation,  or  in-himself  and  out  of 
relation  to  all  other  existence.  But  this  nevertheless  is  sheer 
stupidity  on  our  part.  His  sole  real  claim  to  the  heart's  alle- 
giance lies  in  the  excellency  of  his  creative  and  redemptive 
name.  That  is  to  say,  it  consists,  first,  in  his  so  freely  subject- 
ing himself  to  us  in  all  the  compass  of  our  creaturely  destitution 
and  impotence,  as  to  endow  us  with  physical  and  moral  con- 
sciousness, or  permit  us  to  feel  ourselves  absolutely  to  be ;  and 
then,  secondly,  in  his  becoming  by  virtue  of  such  subjection  so 
apparently  and  exclusively  objective  to  us  —  so  much  the  sole  or 
controlling  aim  of  our  spiritual  destiny  —  as  to  be  able  to  mould 
our  finite  or  subjective  consciousness  at  his  pleasure,  inflaming 
it  finally  to  such  a  pitch  of  sensible  alienation  from — or  felt  other- 
ness to — both  him  and  our  kind,  as  to  make  us  inwardly  loathe 
ourselves,  and  give  ourselves  no  rest  until  we  put  on  the  linea- 
ments of  an  infinite  or  perfect  man,  in  attaining  to  the  proportions 
of  a  regenerate  society,  fellowship,  brotherhood  of  all  mankind. 

XXV. 

The  very  great  obscurity  which  attaches  to  the  problem  of  crea- 
tion is  not,  I  am  persuaded,  intrinsic,  but  altogether  extrinsic, 
arising  from  our  instinctive  and  inveterate  proneness  "  to  put 
the  cart  before  the  horse  "  in  spiritual  things,  by  making  what 
is  first  in  creative  order,  namely,  the  object,  last,  and  what  is 
last,  namely,  the  subject,  first.  The  fundamental  logic  of  crea- 
tion is,  that  it  is  real  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  actual,  and  not  contrari- 
wise ;  thus  that  its  form  determines  its  substance,  or  its  objective 
element  its  subjective  one.  In  other  words,  the  law  of  all  spirit- 
ual existence  is  that  doing  determines  being,  or  that  character  is 
based  upon  action,  not  action  upon  character.  Whatsoever  one 
actually  does  when  one  is  free  from  the  coercion  of  necessity  or 
the  constraint  of  prudence  is  the  measure  of  what  he  really  is. 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  181 

Thus  his  action  when  freely  exerted  determines  his  being  or 
character,  and  is  itself  wholly  undetermined  by  it. 

But  we  are  inveterately  prone  in  our  instinctual  judgments 
to  reverse  this  law.  We  habitually  conceive  that  the  subjective 
element  in  existence  or  action  qualifies  the  objective  one ;  thus 
that  a  man's  being  qualifies  his  doing,  his  character  his  action  ; 
so  that,  applying  this  fallacious  mental  habitude  to  divine  things, 
we  readily  conclude  that  it  is  the  creator  who  limits  or  qualifies 
the  creature,  and  not  exclusively  the  creature  who  limits  or 
qualifies  the  creator. 

The  truth,  however,  is  exactly  contrary  to  this.  The  subjec- 
tive element  in  existence  has  no  other  function  than  to  quantify 
it,  i.  e.  give  it  material  substance  or  filling  out ;  while  its  objec- 
tive element  alone  qualifies  it  or  gives  it  spiritual  form.  My 
subjective  being  merely  quantifies  me,  or  gives  me  natural  iden- 
tification with  all  other  men,  while  my  objective  action  alone 
qualifies  me,  i.  e.  gives  me  spiritual  individuality  or  characteristic 
distinction  from  other  men.  But  if  this  rule  hold  true  in  ref- 
erence to  our  ordinary  existence  and  action,  it  is  emphatically 
true  in  the  sphere  of  creative  action,  where  we  see  the  creator 
contributing  only  the  substantial  or  quantifying  element  in  the 
result,  and  the  creature  himself  furnishing  its  formal  or  quali- 
fying one.  Creation  indeed  is  inconceivable  on  any  less  generous 
terms.  What  sort  of  a  creation  would  that  be,  where  nothing 
was  created?  And  how  shall  anything  be  created  —  i.  e.  have 
being  communicated  to  it  —  unless  it  first  exist  in  its  own  form,  or 
have  selfhood?  And  what  is  it  "  to  exist  in  one's  own  form," 
or  "  to  have  selfhood,"  but  to  exist  naturally,  i.  e.  to  be  the  joint 
product  of  a  generic  or  common  substance  and  a  specific  or 
differential  form?  The  statue  has  no  natural  base,  thus  no 
selfhood  or  form  of  its  own,  to  serve  for  the  communication 
to  it  of  its  inventor's  being.  Hence  the  statue  cannot  properly 
be  said  to  be  created,  but  only  invented,  imagined,  devised.  The 
sculptor  does  not  create  it,  because  he  is  all  unable  to  communi- 
cate himself  to  it,  to  pass  over  to  it,  bag  and  baggage,  in  the 
shape  of  the  material  marble.  If  the  sculptor  could  do  this,  — 
if  he  should  himself  give  maternity  as  well  as  paternity  to  his 
work,  give  it  generic  substance  as  well  as  specific  form,  by  him- 
self animating  the  marble  out  of  which  the  statue  is  wrought, 


182  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

so  that  the  statue  itself  might  thenceforth  be  seen  to  flower  out 
of  the  marble  as  the  grass  flowers  out  of  the  earth  —  then  indeed 
the  sculptor  might  truly  be  said  to  create  his  work,  and  the  statue 
would  feel  a  brimming  life  of  its  own  animating  its  members. 
For  this  is  fundamental  to  the  idea  of  creation,  that  the  creator 
give  natural  existence  or  selfhood  to  Ms  creature,  since  otherwise 
the  creature  will  feel  no  possible  ground  of  spiritual  reaction  to- 
wards the  creator ;  and  this  can  be  done  of  course  only  by  the 
creator  passing  over  unreservedly  to  the  created  nature,  making 
himself  over  in  all  the  wealth  of  his  power  a  prisoner  to  the  na- 
ture of  his  creature,  in  order  that  the  creature,  feeling  this  infi- 
nite potentiality  in  his  nature  incessantly  stimulating  him  to  like 
infinite  action,  may  himself  in  his  turn  put  on  truly  divine  di- 
mensions. Thus  the  statue,  though  it  might  enjoy  physical 
consciousness,  or  the  sentiment  of  its  own  identity,  could  never 
attain  to  moral  consciousness,  or  the  sentiment  of  its  own  indi- 
viduality, save  in  so  far  as  the  sculptor  could  afford  to  immerse 
or  lose  himself  to  sight  in  the  maternal  marble,  in  order  to  un- 
dergo a  resuscitated  or  glorified  existence  in  the  personality  of 
the  statue.  If  the  marble  could  so  completely  obscure,  i.  e.  so 
completely  absorb  or  take  up  into  itself,  the  sculptor's  being  and 
activity,  as  to  betray  no  evidence  of  his  presence  in  it,  so  that  the 
statue  should  never  suspect  the  truth  of  the  case,  nor  hesitate 
consequently  to  look  upon  its  material  substance  as  absolutely 
its  own  substance,  then  of  course  the  statue,  in  formulating  this 
judgment  to  itself,  would  to  its  own  thought  perfectly  exclude  the 
sculptor  from  the  periphery  of  its  conscious  life  or  the  sphere  of 
its  subjective  experience  —  that  is,  from  any  inward  and  spiritual 
relation  to  it  —  and  thereby  compel  him  into  purely  outside  or 
formal  and  objective  conditions. 

Undoubtedly  this  judgment  on  the  statue's  part,  and  conse- 
quent appropriation  to  itself  of  its  creator's  being,  would  be 
strictly  fallacious,  when  viewed  absolutely ;  because  in  very  truth 
the  sculptor  alone  furnishes  all  its  subjective  being  to  the  statue, 
while  the  statue  in  its  turn  supplies  him  only  with  objective  ex- 
istence. But  yet,  evidently,  the  natural  existence  of  the  statue, 
or  its  lining  creation,  would  be  conditioned  upon  this  same  fallacy, 
since  without  it  the  statue  would  be  forever  void  of  selfhood, 
void  of  subjective  life  or  consciousness,  and  hence  of  any  real 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  183 

or  objective  participation  in  its  sculptor's  being.  But  in  point 
of  fact  the  statue  is  not  created,  disclaims  any  living  basis,  be- 
cause it  lacks  that  generic  or  identical  substance,  that  common 
quantity,  which  we  call  nature  (but  which  in  reality  is  God-in- 
us,  God-man,  the  lord),  and  which  is  essential  to  all  living  exist- 
ence ;  and  possesses  only  the  specific  or  individual  form,  only 
the  differential  quality,  it  derives  from  man.  Hence  it  is  an  in- 
animate or  artificial  existence,  in  ghastly  contrast  with  all  that 
lives  or  grows. 

Such  then  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  the  creator's  ever 
becoming  objective,  i.  e.  cognizable  to  his  creature,  that  he  be 
utterly  swamped  so  to  speak  in  the  created  nature,  utterly  lost 
to  sight  in  the  creature's  subjective  consciousness,  and  know  no 
resurrection  from  that  death  but  in  a  new  and  spiritual  or  objec- 
tive creation.  Creation  means,  first  of  all,  giving  the  creature 
subjective  consciousness,  which  is  felt  freedom  or  selfhood  ;  it 
means  the  endowing  of  the  creature  with  its  own  conscious  life,  its 
own  natural  form ;  and  in  order  to  this  the  creator  must  himself 
be  its  unrecognized  generic  substance,  must  himself  constitute 
the  sole,  patient,  unflinching,  invisible  reality  imprisoned  in  its 
visible  natural  form  or  phenomenality ;  because  otherwise  the 
creature  would  be  without  selfhood  or  conscious  life,  and  hence 
without  any  faculty  of  spiritual  insight,  or  sympathetic  conjunc- 
tion with  its  maker.  This  natural  form  or  appearance  of  the 
creature  will  be  indelibly  his  own,  but  it  will  be  his  by  no  ab- 
solute or  unconditional  right,  but  simply  because  the  creator 
himself  is  its  sole  underlying  spiritual  substance  or  being,  eter- 
nally hidden  from  view,  eternally  masked  from  discovery,  under 
the  gross  mental  superstition  —  the  dense  mental  incubus  —  we 
call  the  world  or  nature. 

It  takes  but  a  glance  to  see  how  repugnant  this  entire  strain 
of  doctrine  is  to  established  maxims,  whether  practical  or  spec- 
ulative. If  we  cannot  help  magnifying  the  subjective  element, 
the  element  of  self,  in  all  our  moral  and  aesthetic  judgments,*  we 
surely  cannot  help  doing  so  with  added  emphasis  and  good-will 
in  our  judgment  of  spiritual  and  divine  things.  Who  of  us  ever 

*  See  Appendix,  Note  G,  for  some  illustrations  of  the  way  in  which  our  practi- 
cal judgments  are  habitually  betrayed  by  the  absurd  preponderance  we  give  to  the 
subjective  or  phenomenal  element  in  consciousness. 


184  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

doubts  that  in  creation  the  creator  remains  essentially  aloof  from 
the  created  nature,  essentially  uncommitted  to  it,  when  in  truth 
what  we  call  the  created  nature  is  itself  a  mere  shadow  or  re- 
flection of  the  creative  effulgence  stamped  upon  our  mental  hori- 
zon, in  order  to  give  the  creature  that  necessary  background  or 
relief  which  he  requires  for  his  own  self-recognition  ?  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  the  created  nature.  It  is  a  mere  phantom  of  the 
creature's  ignorance  by  which,  in  the  absence  of  any  spiritual  in- 
sight, he  seeks  and  contrives  to  account  for  his  own  existence. 
My  moral  part,  which  individualizes  me  from  all  lower  existence 
and  identifies  me  only  with  man,  is  absolute  and  suffices  unto 
itself,  being  a  pure  fact  of  consciousness.  But  my  physical  part, 
which  identifies  me  with  all  lower  existence  and  individualizes 
me  only  from  man,  being  a  fact  of  sense,  not  of  consciousness,  is 
anything  but  absolute,  and  utterly  refuses  therefore  to  be  ac- 
counted for  on  any  hypothesis  short  of  nature,  i.  e.  short  of 
some  middle  term  between  God  and  myself,  giving  us  that  need- 
ful subjective  distance  from  each  other  which  is  implied  in  our 
subsequent  objective  contact  or  approximation  to  each  other. 
Thus  nature  regarded  as  existing  absolutely,  or  apart  from  the 
mind,  is  a  mere  superstition  or  abject  fetch  of  our  ignorance  in 
regard  to  God,  whereby  we  make  out  to  account  for  creation  on 
mechanical  —  whilst  we  are  still  untaught  to  do  so  on  dynam- 
ical—  principles.  Being  able  as  we  are  to  distinguish  between 
creator  and  creature  in  thought,  we  presume  they  are  also  dis- 
tinguishable in  fact ;  whereas  in  fact  they  are  so  utterly  undis- 
tinguishable  —  so  indissolubly  blent,  so  chaotically  commingled 
or  confused  —  that  we  inevitably  mistake  what  is  logically  the 
creative  element  (nature)  for  the  created,  and  what  is  logically 
the  created  (man)  for  the  creative. 

In  short  we  never  suspect  that  God  is  creative  only  in  and  by 
the  creature,  but,  on  the  contrary,  hold  him  to  be  so  absolutely, 
or  in  and  by  himself  exclusively.  That  is  to  say,  we  invaria- 
bly suppose  that  the  creator  is  subjectively  not  objectively  con- 
stituted. We  have  no  idea  that  the  husband  or  father  is  subjec- 
tively constituted,  for  we  see  very  plainly  that  he  is  objectively 
constituted,  being  what  he  is  as  husband  and  father,  not  in  virtue 
of  himself,  but  only  in  virtue  of  wife  and  child.  Yet  we  never 
tire  of  making  this  glaring  mistake  in  the  higher  relation,  and 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  185 

insist  upon  making  God  subjectively  creative,  instead  of  objec- 
tively so ;  creative  in  and  by  himself,  instead  of  in  and  by  the 
creature  exclusively ;  creative  by  right  of  being^  and  not  by  right 
exclusively  of  doing.  We  suppose  him  to  be  somehow  essen- 
tially a  creator,  whereas  he  is  only  existentially  so ;  i.  e.  he  cre- 
ates only  in  so  far  as  he  objectively  exists,  or  goes  forth  from 
himself,  from  his  own  subjectivity,  from  his  barren  and  bleak 
infinitude,  and  takes  up  his  abode  in  the  finite,  or  what  is  not 
himself,  in  what  indeed  from  the  nature  of  the  case  must  logi- 
cally be  the  exact  and  total  opposite  of  himself.  The  strict  truth 
of  creation  —  which  is  that  the  creature  owes  himself  wholly  to 
God,  and  has  no  breath  of  underived  being  —  necessitates  that 
he  shall  not  even  appear  to  be,  save  by  the  creator's  actual  or  ob- 
jective disappearance  within  all  the  field  of  his  subjective  con- 
sciousness; save  by  the  creator's  becoming  objectively  merged, 
obscured,  drowned  out,  so  to  speak,  in  the  created  subjectivity. 
The  relation  between  the  two  is  that  of  substance  and  form,  and 
you  can  no  more  rationally  discern  where  one  ends  and  the  other 
begins  than  you  can  sensibly  discriminate  what  is  purely  mate- 
rial or  substantial  in  the  statue  from  what  is  purely  spiritual  or 
formal.  As  then  the  substance  of  things  is  exclusively  by  their 
form,  while  their  form  exists  only  from  their  substance,  so  what- 
soever in  existence  is  created  (as  having  inward  being  given  to 
it)  logically  exists  only  by  what  is  creative ;  while  whatsoever 
is  creative  (as  having  outward  existence  given  to  it)  logically 
subsists  only  by  what  is  created. 

Creator  and  creature  then  are  strictly  correlated  existences, 
the  latter  remorselessly  implicating  or  involving  the  former,  the 
former  in  his  turn  assiduously  explicating  or  evolving  the  latter. 
The  creator  is  in  truth  the  subjective  or  inferior  term  of  the  re- 
lation, and  the  creature  its  objective  or  superior  term ;  although 
in  point  of  fact  or  appearance  the  relationship  is  reversed,  the 
creator  being  thought  to  be  primary  and  controlling,  while  the 
creature  is  thought  secondary  and  subservient.  The  truth  in- 
curs this  humiliation,  undergoes  this  falsification,  on  our  behalf 
exclusively,  who,  because  we  have  by  nature  no  perception  of 
God  as  a  spirit,  but  only  as  a  person  like  ourselves,  are  even  bru- 
tally ignorant  of  the  divine  power  and  ways.  But  it  is  a  sheer 
humiliation  nevertheless.  For  in  very  truth  it  is  the  creator 


186  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

alone  who  gives  subjective  seeming,  or  phenomenal  constitution, 
to  us,  only  that  we,  appearing  to  ourselves  thereupon  absolutely 
to  be,  may  ever  after  give  formal  existence  or  objective  reality 
to  him.  Thus  creation  is  not  a  something  outwardly  achieved 
by  God  in  space  and  time,  but  a  something  inwardly  wrought 
by  him  within  the  compass  exclusively  of  human  nature  or  hu- 
man consciousness ;  a  something  subjectively  conceived  by  his 
love,  patiently  borne  or  elaborated  by  his  wisdom,  and  painfully 
brought  forth  by  his  power ;  just  as  the  child  is  subjectively  con- 
ceived, patiently  borne,  and  painfully  brought  forth  by  the 
mother.  Creation  is  no  brisk  activity  on  God's  part,  but  only  a 
long-patience  or  suffering.  It  is  no  ostentatious  self-assertion, 
no  dazzling  parade  of  magical,  irrational,  or  irresponsible  power ; 
it  is  an  endless  humiliation  or  prorogation  of  himself  to  all  the 
lowest  exigencies  of  the  created  consciousness.  In  short,  it  is  no 
finite  divine  action,  as  we  stupidly  dream,  giving  the  creature 
objective  or  absolute  projection  from  his  creator;  it  is  in  truth 
and  exclusively  an  infinite  divine  passion,  which,  all  in  giving  its 
creature  subjective  or  phenomenal  existence,  contrives  to  convert 
this  provisional  existence  of  his  into  objective  or  real  being,  by 
freely  endowing  the  created  nature  with  all  its  own  pomp  of  love, 
of  wisdom,  and  of  power. 

It  is  easy  to  see  what  an  immense  revolution  Swedenborg  ac- 
complishes in  philosophy  by  thus  humanizing  nature,  or  resolv- 
ing it  into  the  mind,  into  man's  subjective  consciousness,  and  so 
vacating  its  claim  to  the  rational  objectivity  which  we,  misled  by 
sense,  erroneously  ascribe  to  it.  What  we  call  nature  —  the 
generic  or  universal  element  in  existence  —  has  no  right,  on 
Swedenborg's  principles,  to  exist  in  itself  or  subjectively,  but 
only  as  an  implication  of  the  human  mind.  It  is  a  mere  out- 
come or  effect  in  the  sphere  of  sense  —  a  mere  lifeless  imagery, 
«cho,  or  correspondence  —  of  a  spiritual  work  of  God  which  is 
taking  place  in  the  invisible  depths  of  the  mind,  or  the  realm  ex- 
clusively of  the  human  consciousness.  And  if  therefore  we  per- 
sist in  regarding  it  as  a  divine  ens  or  finality,  we  shall  not  only 
miss  the  signal  advantage  it  might,  as  an  image  or  echo,  have 
rendered  us,  in  making  us  acquainted  with  an  otherwise  inscru- 
table original,  but  our  intellectual  faculty  itself  will  become 
spiritually  bastardized  by  being  put  out  of  all  lineal  or  direct 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  187 

relation  to  the  divine  mind.  What  alone  is  objective  to  the 
divine  mind  is  man ;  and  if  therefore  we  would  put  our  intelli- 
gence in  harmony  with  God's,  we  must  be  content  to  see  in 
nature  a  mere  phenomenal  outcome  or  appanage  of  man,  a  mere 
shadow  or  correspondence  of  the  human  mind.  The  natural 
universe,  on  Svvedenborg's  principles,  does  not  exist  to  the  divine 
mind,  being  destitute  of  all  reality  outside  of  consciousness.  It 
exists  only  as  an  inevitable  implication  of  created  thought,  its 
use  being  to  give  logical  substance,  background,  continuity, 
coherence,  identity,  to  all  the  specific  or  individual  details 
of  the  creature's  sensible  experience.  All  universals  are  men- 
tally, not  physically,  realized.  The  family,  for  example,  is  a 
universe  of  relationship,  mentally  constituted,  extending  between 
persons  who  have  sprung  from  the  loins  of  a  certain  pair,  asso- 
ciated for  procreative  ends.  The  tribe  again  is  a  unit  of  rela- 
tionship, mentally  constituted,  existing  among  many  families ; 
and  the  city  in  like  manner  unites  or  gives  universal  mental 
form  to  many  tribes  ;  while  many  cities  in  their  turn  go  to  make 
up  the  mental  unity  called  the  nation,  which  is  the  highest  uni- 
versality yet  realized  in  human  thought.  If  however  the  unity 
of  the  race  itself  had  been  practically  realized  by  the  mind,  it 
would  confess  itself  a  strict  unit  of  relationship  existing  among 
all  nations  and  peoples,  and  would  thus  illustrate  in  its  measure 
the  truth  I  am  enforcing,  namely,  that  the  generic  or  universal 
element  in  existence  is  always  and  exclusively  a  necessity  of  our 
thought,  representing  or  expressing  that  identity  of  substance, 
that  community  of  being,  which  to  our  intelligence  subtends 
all  specific  or  differential  forms.  It  is  in  all  cases  a  strict  logical 
induction,  or  mental  generalization,  from  a  greater  or  less  amount 
of  specific  experience,  and  it  is  utterly  destitute  of  real  or  abso- 
lute validity.  In  short  nature  is  a  purely  mental  fact.  It  con- 
stitutes, itself,  indeed  the  identical  mind  of  the  race,  what  we 
call  the  common  mind  of  man ;  and  we  are  each  of  us  mentally 
qualified  or  endowed  —  each  of  us  intellectually  energized  —  in 
the  degree,  not  of  our  merely  sensible  or  isolated  and  absolute, 
but  of  our  rational  or  relative  and  associated,  discernment :  our 
discernment,  not  of  mere  visible  existence,  but  of  the  invisible 
ratio  or  relationship  which  binds  all  existence  in  unity.  And  if 
all  this  be  true,  then  -the  reader  sees  at  a  glance  how  mistaken 


188  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

he  has  always  been  in  viewing  human  nature,  or  the  human 
race,  as  a  physical  and  not  a  purely  mental  or  metaphysical 
quantity,  as  a  fixed  or  absolute  and  not  as  an  exclusively  free  or 
contingent  fact.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  human  nature,  out- 
side of  men's  consciousness  ;  no  such  thing  as  a  race  of  man 
existing  in  itself,  or  independently  of  our  mental  experience. 
The  phrases  in  question  attest  no  substantive  reality,  but  only  an 
inevitable  infirmity,  only  a  gross  superstition,  of  our  carnal 
thought,  whereby,  in  our  ignorance  of  God's  living  or  spiritual 
perfection,  we  are  prone  to  account  for  existence  on  purely 
mechanical  or  pseudo-rational  principles.  Thus  human  nature  is 
no  fixed  or  absolute,  but  an  altogether  free  or  empirical  quantity, 
conditioned  at  its  highest  upon  such  a  harmony  of  interests  be- 
tween each  and  every  man,  as  amounts  to  an  actual  incarnation 
of  the  law  of  conscience  in  every  individual  bosom ;  and  at  its 
lowest  consequently,  upon  such  a  conflict  of  interests  between 
man  and  man  as  degrades  human  life  to  a  lower  level  than  that 
of  the  brutes.  The  human  race,  human  nature,  has  no  preten- 
sion in  other  words  to  be  livingly  or  spiritually  constituted, 
until  the  twin  elements  of  our  consciousness  —  self  and  the 
neighbor,  delight  and  duty,  interest  and  principle  —  have  been 
freed  from  their  inveterate  subjective  antagonism,  and  definitively 
reconciled  or  married  in  an  objective  society,  fellowship,  or 
brotherhood  of  man  with  man  throughout  the  earth.  Con- 
science, as  we  have  seen,  is  the  sole  qualifying,  i.  e.  creative, 
law  of  human  nature,  inasmuch  as  it  alone  individualizes  man 
from  the  brute,  and  alone  identifies  him  with  himself;  and 
what  conscience  with  irresistible  sovereignty  enforces  is  the  un- 
mitigated society,  fellowship,  equality  of  all  men  with  each  man, 
and  of  each  man  with  all  men,  throughout  the  illimitable  realm 
of  God's  dominion. 

It  is  all  very  true  then  that  the  generic  or  universal  existence 
which  we  ascribe  to  things  is  a  purely  mental,  not  a  physical  ex- 
perience on  our  part.  We  know  only  specific  or  individual 
form,  and  the  generic  or  universal  substance  we  ascribe  to  such 
form  under  the  term  "  nature,"  is  only  a  prejudice  or  superstition 
growing  out  of  our  ignorance  of  God's  creative  perfection,  or 
of  his  spiritual  and  living  presence  in  all  existence.  What  we 
call  nature  in  fact  is  only  a  gigantic  shadow  cast  upon  the  mind 


THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG.  189 

by  specific  or  individual  —  which  is  spiritual  —  form;  a  shadow 
whose  sole  substance  is  the  lord,  or  God- Man :  that  is,  society. 
And  we  must  allow  it  no  intellectual  tolerance  but  as  such 
shadow.  But  now  if  we  are  faithful  to  this  obligation,  we  shall 
at  once  separate  ourselves  intellectually  from  all  that  is  called 
religion,  or  philosophy,  or  even  science  almost,  upon  the  earth. 
All  the  recognized  leaders  of  human  thought  cherish  this  pesti- 
lent superstition  in  regard  to  nature's  absolute  universality ;  a 
superstition  which  keeps  our  reason  at  the  level  of  sense  in 
spiritual  things,  or  degrades  it  into  an  occasional  haunt  of  the 
spiritual  world,  at  most,  when  it  ought  to  be  its  orderly  and  per- 
manent home.  The  current  superstition  is  twofold,  as  implying, 
first,  that  nature  (the  world  or  macrocosm)  exists  universally  or 
as  a  whole,  in  itself,  and  without  reference  to  the  spiritual  world, 
which  is  supposed  in  fact,  if  admitted  at  all,  to  be  simply  second- 
ary and  subservient  thereto ;  and  secondly,  that  as  such  universe 
or  whole  it  of  course  involves  man  (the  mind  or  microcosm). 
Such  is  the  traditional  hallucination  belonging  to  our  orthodox 
ways  of  thinking  both  in  science  and  philosophy.  All  our  intel- 
lectual scribes  and  rulers  agree  in  this,  that  nature  is  a  being,  and 
not  merely  a  seeming  or  appearance.  So  far  indeed  are  they 
from  suspecting  that  she  is  but  the  shadow  of  the  human  mind 
projected  upon  the  senses  whereby  the  mind  comes  at  last  to 
adequate  self-consciousness,  that  they  look  upon  nature  as  the 
substance,  and  man  himself  as  the  shadow.  Swedenborg  alone 
disenchants  the  intellect  of  this  illusion,  by  denying  nature  as  a 
true  universal,  and  allowing  her  only  a  relative  universality,  a 
universality  in  relation  to  our  thought,  that  is,  to  the  innumera- 
ble specific  forms  our  thought  embraces.  All  cognition  is  of 
necessity  specific  or  formal  (that  is,  spiritual)  ;  and  what  we 
postulate  as  a  generic  or  universal  background  to  such  cognition, 
or  its  subject-matter,  is  a  transparent  fetch  of  our  ignorance  to 
supply  the  lack  of  a  present  or  living  creator.  We  are  willing 
for  various  decorous  reasons  to  admit  that  God  may  have  created 
"  once  upon  a  time,"  at  some  so-called  or  imaginary  beginning 
of  things  ;  but  that  he  and  he  alone  spiritually  constitutes  the 
present  life,  the  actual  or  identical  being,  of  all  that  our  eyes  be- 
hold, is  what  we  are  by  no  means  prepared  to  acknowledge,  and 
in  defect  of  such  preparation  have  recourse  to  nature  as  a  tern- 


190  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

porary  opiate  to  troublesome  thought.  Thus  what  we  call  na- 
ture and  objectify  to  our  sensuous  imagination  as  an  absolute 
universality,  is  at  most  only  a  prejudice  or  false  induction  of  the 
mind,  whereby  in  its  ignorance  of  God's  creative  power,  or, 
what  is  the  same  thing,  of  the  laws  of  spiritual  being,  it  instinct- 
ively seeks  to  supply  a  common  ratio  —  to  invent  an  identical 
bond  or  basis  —  for  all  existence. 

Nature  accordingly  does  not  involve  the  mind.  So  far  indeed 
is  it  from  involving  the  mind,  that  it  is  itself  rigidly  involved  by 
the  mind  as  the  necessary  subjective  base  of  its  own  objective 
evolution ;  just  as  the  marble  is  involved  in  the  statue,  and  the 
mother  in  the  child,  as  the  necessary  condition  of  these  latter's 
existence.  In  short  nature  has  no  existence  save  in  relation  to 
human  thought,  or  as  affording  needful  relief  to.  the  specific  con- 
tents of  our  senses  ;  and  hence  to  talk  of  "  the  order  of  nature," 
or  "  the  laws  of  nature,"  as  if  those  cheap  phrases  expressed 
something  more  than  a  subjective  cognition,  something  objective 
and  absolute,  some  reality  in  short  out  of  consciousness  and 
binding  upon  the  divine  mind,  is  to  talk  childish  nonsense. 
These  terms  are  strictly  invalid  to  philosophic  thought,  save  as 
indicating  the  constancy  of  nature's  subjection  to  the  mind,  to 
our  mental  necessities.  They  merely  indicate  the  use  she  sub- 
serves in  furnishing  a  hypothetical  base  to  science,  or  giving  it 
provisional  flooring,  foothold,  fixity,  during  the  protracted  period 
of  its  spiritual  infancy,  or  while  it  is  still  ignorant  of  creative 
order,  and  remains  a  contented  dupe  to  the  illusions  of  space 
and  time.  And  to  allow  them  any  ontological  significance  there- 
fore, any  really  creative  virtue,  is  simply  to  shut  the  intellect  up 
to  the  moonlight  and  starlight  of  sense,  and  exclude  it  from  the 
fervent  splendors  of  the  sun  of  faith. 

Yet  it  is  just  this  unsuspected  superstition  and  imbecility  of 
our  natural  science,  just  this  hypothetical  or  supposititious  univer- 
sality it  ascribes  to  nature,  that  supplies  the  main  existing  obsta- 
cle to  philosophic  thought,  or  the  intellectual  progress  of  society. 
Our  science  habitually  takes  for  granted,  not  merely  the  relative, 
but  the  absolute  universality  of  nature  ;  not  merely  her  univer- 
sality with  respect  to  all  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  exist- 
ence, but  her  universality  with  respect  to  herself,  her  universality 
so  to  speak  in  the  divine  sight;  and  hence  we  habitually  rule 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  191 

out  the  divine  or  spiritual  as  a  vital  element  in  consciousness,  or 
legitimate  factor  in  existence.*  For  if  there  be  a  generic  or  uni- 
versal existence,  which  is  not  merely  the  logical  or  contingent  — 
but  the  real  or  absolute  —  ground  of  all  specific  or  individual 
form,  then  of  course  all  higher,  or  spiritual  and  divine,  existence 
becomes  ipso  facto  excluded,  and  our  long  and  patient  hope  of 
immortality  turns  out  unfounded.  The  essential  of  nature  is 
passivity  or  community ;  i.  e.  the  predominance  of  substance  to 
form,  of  subject  to  object.  The  essential  of  spirit  again  is 
activity  or  difference ;  i.  e.  the  predominance  of  the  formal  or 
objective  element  in  consciousness  over  its  substantial  or  subjec- 
tive element.  It  is  obvious  accordingly  that  the  spiritual  realm 
must  be  absolutely  barred  out  of  our  intellectual  cognizance,  so 
long  as  the  mind  remains  a  prey  to  the  illusions  of  our  natural 
science,  or  holds  nature  to  be  a  direct  manifestation  of  divine 
power.  It  was  the  uniform  result  of  Swedenborg's  protracted 
intellectual  intercourse  with  spirits  and  angels,  that  he  found  no 
form  of  spiritual  existence  either  intelligible  or  conceivable,  save 
upon  the  hypothesis  of  nature's  rigid  involution  in  man,  or  its 
essential  subserviency  to  the  soul.  The  fundamental  difference 
he  discovers  between  the  good  and  evil  spirit,  or  angel  and  devil, 
is  that  the  latter  confirms  himself  in  the  persuasion  of  nature's 
absoluteness,  or  her  real  universality,  while  the  former  holds 
her  existence  to  be  purely  logical,  —  i.  e.  purely  superficial  and 
apparitional,  like  the  image  of  one's  person  in  a  glass,  —  and 
pronounces  every  contrary  judgment  to  be  a  fallacious  inference 
from  sense. 

XXVI. 

But  I  must  bring  my  labor  to  a  close,  or  else  give  my  book  a 
bulk  which  it  was  not  designed  to  have. 

Let  me  assure  the  reader,  then,  that  he  need  not  look  beyond 
this  doctrine  of  nature's  essential  relativity  to  the  human  under- 
standing, her  strict  convertibility  in  fact  with  the  mind  of  the 
race,  to  find  the  very  clew  he  craves  to  Swedenborg's  unprece- 
dented and  immortal  services  to  philosophy.  The  sole  and  com- 
plete meaning  of  nature,  philosophically  regarded,  is,  according 

*  See  Appendix,  note  H. 


192  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

to  Swedenborg,  to  furnish  a  logical  ultimate  or  phenomenal  back- 
ground to  the  human  mind  in  its  spiritual  infancy,  in  order  that 
the  mind,  being  thus  objectively  mirrored  to  itself,  might  present 
a  subjective  floor  or  fulcrum  every  way  apposite  to  the  opera- 
tions of  the  creative  spirit.  This,  neither  more  nor  less,  is 
Swedenborg' s  philosophic  secret.  If  nature,  or  the  realm  of  the 
indefinite,  did  not  at  least  logically  intervene  between  creator  and 
creature,  or  infinite  or  finite,  giving  the  latter  sensible  projection 
from  the  former,  or  provisional  reality  to  its  own  perception,  the 
creature  might  still  claim  a  physical  existence  conditioned  upon 
the  equilibrium  of  plenty  and  want,  or  pleasure  and  pain,  but  he 
would  be  utterly  destitute  of  that  moral  or  rational  consciousness 
conditioned  upon  the  equilibrium  of  good  and  evil,  or  of  the 
divine  and  human  natures,  upon  which  nevertheless  his  entire 
spiritual  being  and  destiny  are  grounded.  Thus  the  sole  and 
perfect  key  to  Swedenborg's  ontology,  either  for  the  present  or 
any  future  world,  is  his  point-blank  denial  of  the  oritological 
postulate  save  in  the  strictest  reference  to  created  existence. 
His  entire  ontologic  doctrine  is  summed  up  in  the  literal  veracity 
of  CREATION,  meaning  by  that  term  the  truth  of  God's  NATURAL 
HUMANITY,  or  of  a  most  living  and  actual  unition  of  the  divine 
and  human  natures,  avouching  itself  within  the  compass  of  man's 
historic  consciousness,  and  generating  there  the  stupendous  har- 
monies of  a  spontaneous  human  society,  fellowship,  or  brother- 
hood. 

Let  the  reader  remember  then  that  what  forever  separates 
Swedenborg  intellectually  from  the  fanatic,  or  man  of  mere 
faith,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  the  sceptic,  or  man  of  mere 
science,  on  the  other,  is  that  he  never  looks  upon  nature  as  an 
ontological  but  only  as  a  psychological  phenomenon.  He  does 
not  regard  it  as  being,  but  only  and  at  best  as  seeming  to  be.  It 
is  an  appearance  or  semblance  of  being  to  an  intelligence  still 
uninstructed  in  the  divine  perfection.  The  ontological  assump- 
tion which  is  common  to  our  technical  faith  and  our  technical 
science  alike  is  gross  and  revolting  to  Swedenborg,  because  it 
implies  that  nature  not  only  actually  appears  to  be,  but  in  truth 
realty  is,  quite  independently  of  such  appearance ;  that  she  not 
only  exists  provisionally  or  in  relation  to  the  wants  of  our  intel- 
ligence, but  exists  also  absolutely  or  in  herself,  and  out  of  rela- 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  193 

tion  to  that  intelligence.  Mr.  Mansel  and  Mr.  Mill  both  alike 
assume  nature's  finality,  or  conceive  her  to  be  a  veritable  divine 
end,  in  place  of  a  mere  means  to  an  end.  They  both  alike 
(and  quite  unconsciously  of  course)  suppose  her  to  be  an  abso- 
lute and  not  a  mere  logical  existence ;  suppose  her  to  constitute 
an  obvious  objective  explanation  of  our  being,  and  hence  are 
at  a  hopeless  remove  from  ever  so  much  as  suspecting  her  to  be 
a  mere  subjective  implication  of  our  thought.  And  being  thus 
identified  in  their  philosophic  origin,  they  can  hardly  expect  to  be 
widely  separated  in  their  philosophic  destiny.  In  fact  their  gath- 
ering philosophic  doom  simulates  that  of  the  fabled  Kilkenny  cats, 
which  having  been  conjoined  by  the  tail,  and  then  hung  upon  a 
clothes-line  to  struggle  together  with  what  hearty  mutual  aver- 
sion they  might,  could  only  struggle  into,  and  not  out  of,  each 
other's  fatal  embrace.  Indeed  everybody,  religious  or  scientific, 
who  holds  to  nature  as  a  true  universal  and  to  man  consequently 
as  a  true  individual,  is  spiritually  a  Kilkenny  cat,  with  his  lower 
parts  affronting  the  sky,  and  his  higher  parts  caressing  the  earth. 
And  precisely  what  Swedenborg  does  for  the  intellect  is  to  re- 
lease it  from  this  enforced  feline  posture,  and  restore  it  to  upright 
and  comfortable  human  form.  That  is  to  say,  he  teaches  us  in- 
flexibly to  deny  and,  if  need  be,  to  deride  nature's  preten- 
sion to  be  anything  more  than  a  visual  surface  or  shadow  of 
reality  stamped  upon  our  mental  sensory,  just  as  a  photographic 
negative  is  only  a  visual  surface  or  shadow  of  some  person  or 
thing  stamped  upon  a  sensitive  plate. 

Here  I  suppose  I  ought  to  conclude  ;  but  I  cannot,  in  fairness 
to  the  reader,  do  so  without  a  word  or  two  in  practical  applica- 
tion of  the  doctrine  we  have  been  canvassing  to  the  question  of 
idealism. 

The  foible  of  our  existing  metaphysic  is,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  it  accepts  without  misgiving  the  scientific  postulate  of  an 
absolute  or  ontological  basis  for  existence,  and  hence  utterly 
voids  the  spiritual  truth  of  creation.  Indeed  the  only  foe  philos- 
ophy has  encountered  from  the  beginning  —  at  least  the  only  one 
capable  of  impeding  her  march  to  universal  empire  —  is  idealism  : 
which  is  the  pretension  to  confer  upon  existence  a  noumenal  as 
well  as  phenomenal  quality,  or  invest  it  with  its  own  individ- 
uality no  less  than  its  own  identity.  Idealism  is  philosophy 

13 


194  THE  SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG. 

turned  upside  down.  That  is  to  say,  it  amounts  doctrinally  to 
such  an  affiliation  of  the  objective  to  the  subjective  element  in 
consciousness,  of  the  not-me  to  the  me^  of  being  to  existence, 
form  to  substance,  individuality  to  identity,  as  renders  crea- 
tion simply  impossible,  and  puts  a  point-blank  contradiction  upon 
science.  It  is  philosophy  mimicking  the  sport  of  children,  whom 
we  occasionally  see  bowing  their  heads  till  they  bring  them  to  a 
level  with  their  feet,  in  order  that  they  may  catch  a  glimpse 
through  their  legs  of  an  inverted  world.  And  even  idealism 
would  have  been  a  harmless  foe  to  philosophy  if  it  had  ever  been 
a  frank  and  open  one  ;  if  it  had  not  always  been  domiciled  under 
her  roof,  and  professed  a  sturdy  friendship  for  her,  while  secretly 
working  her  downfall.  For  the  aim  of  philosophy  is  twofold : 
1.  To  discriminate  between  the  spiritual  or  objective,  and  the 
material  or  subjective  contents  of  existence  ;  and  2.  To  hold  the 
latter  in  rigid  and  rightful  abeyance  to  the  former.  And  what 
could  be  half  so  sure  to  defeat  these  aims  as  the  empiricism  of 
her  professed  adepts,  who  in  accepting  the  testimony  of  sense,  or 
a  science  conformed  to  sense,  as  final,  first  subvert  her  lively 
oracles  by  sinking  the  objective  being  of  things  in  their  subjec- 
tive existence,  and  then  coolly  inflate  the  latter  element  to 
divine  or  absolute  dimensions  ?  The  idealist  maintains  that 
everything  visible  is  exhaustively  mortgaged  to  an  invisible 
essence  or  subjectivity,  which  Plato  and  Hegel  call  its  idea, 
and  Kant  its  noumenon  ;  and  that  this  inmost  essence  or  sub- 
jectivity of  the  thing,  constituting  as  it  does  the  very  self  of  its 
self,  is  the  sole  secret  of  its  phenomenal  apparition.  And  what 
does  this  amount  to,  unless  it  be  to  supersede  the  creator  by  the 
creature,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  swamp  the  wholly  uncon- 
scious and  unselfish  being  of  things  in  their  wholly  conscious 
and  selfish  existence,  and  thence  reproduce  it  in  glorified  egotis- 
tic form  ?  In  fact  creation,  according  to  idealism,  and  especially 
according  to  the  Hegelian  or  consummate  form  of  the  doctrine, 
is  the  sincere,  unaffected,  apotheosis  of  egotism.  And  when 
philosophy  has  grown  so  anile  and  so  blear-eyed  to  the  proper 
objects  of  her  contemplation,  as  to  accept  this  rubbish  of  idealism, 
or  consent  to  see  in  God  only  the  infinite  potentiality  of  our  own 
finite  conceit  and  imbecility,  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  common 
sense  of  mankind  votes  philosophy  herself  a  nuisance  of  the 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  195 

first  order,  and  cries  aloud  for  some  fresh  resurgent  form  of 
heavenly  truth. 

But  idealism  is  not  original  even  in  its  aberrations.  It  is  at 
most  an  attempted  systematization  of  one  of  the  vulgarest  preju- 
dices of  the  human  understanding.  What  Kant  means  by  his 
noumenon  or  ihing-in-itself,  what  Plato  and  Hegel  mean  by  their 
creative  idea  of  things,  is  simply  to  objectify  or  render  absolute 
the  subjective  element  in  consciousness,  by  making  it  supply  its 
own  genesis  or  ground  of  being ;  so  getting  well  rid  forever  of 
an  actual  or  living  creation.  And  this  is  exactly  what  we  all 
mean  when,  under  the  coercion  of  the  sensuous  understanding, 
we  attribute  to  ourselves,  as  we  habitually  do,  an  objective  indi- 
viduality answering  to  our  subjective  identity ;  a  spiritual  reality 
commensurate  with  our  natural  phenomenality.  The  only  dif- 
ference between  these  philosophers  and  the  people  is  this,  and  it 
is  not  to  the  advantage  of  the  former  :  they  reflectively  confirm 
what  to  the  latter  remains  a  mere  instinctual  fallacy,  and  so  ex- 
clude themselves  from  intellectual  daylight.  But  we  all  alike 
instinctively  practise  the  same  hallucination.  We  all  tacitly  at- 
tribute to  ourselves  a  noumenal  or  real  quantity  as  the  back- 
ground of  our  actual  or  phenomenal  quality,  and  on  that  as- 
sumption appropriate  to  ourselves  any  amount  of  absolute  good 
and  absolute  evil.  Our  moral  instinct,  our  feeling  of  selfhood 
or  freedom,  is  so  sincere  and  unhesitating,  is  so  natural  in  a  word, 
that  we  cannot  help  claiming  an  absolute  property  in  every  word 
we  say,  and  every  deed  we  do ;  so  that  whenever  we  happen  to 
say  or  to  do  what  our  conscience  approves  or  disapproves,  we 
never  suspect  that  both  word  and  deed  are  a  strictly  normal 
effect  of  causes  as  impersonal  or  universal  as  those  which  regu- 
late the  phenomena  of  physics,  but  on  the  contrary  flatter  our- 
selves that  we  are  absolutely  good  or  absolutely  evil  persons, 
who  have  the  identical  power  which  God  has,  of  originating  our 
own  actions,  or  acting  above  law. 

But  however  this  may  be,  whether  idealism  be  a  mere 
Aclamic  taint  in  the  blood,  or  whether  it  be  the  legitimate  out- 
come of  exceptional  fatuity,  it  is  in  all  its  forms  the  standing 
reproach  of  philosophy,  keeping  it  forever  oscillating,  as  men's 
temperaments  chance  to  incline  them,  between  a  frigid  atheism 
and  a  torrid  pantheism.  The  one  very  fruitful  idea  which  it 


196  THE   SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

is  pledged  to  demolish  —  in  the  interest  of  the  utterly  unfruit- 
ful ones  it  is  pledged  to  maintain  —  is  the  idea  of  creation  as  a 
living  or  actual  operation   of  divine  power ;  and  it  does  this  by 
turning  the  creator  logically  into  undeveloped  creature,  and  the 
creature  into  developed  creator.     And  philosophy  has  not  an 
hour's  honest  vocation  upon  earth,  if  it  be  not  to  demonstrate 
the  spiritual  or  ever-living  truth  of  creation,  in  showing  us  that 
however  much  we  may  subjectively  expand  and  collapse,  how- 
ever much  we  may  rejoice  and  mourn,  however  comparatively 
enlarged  we  may  become  in  knowledge   and  wisdom,  or  com- 
paratively sunken  we  may  remain  in  ignorance  and  superstition, 
we  are  all  these  things  only  to  the  extent  of  our  own  finite  con- 
sciousness, and  without  the  slightest  corresponding  compromise 
of  objective  or  spiritual  realities.     No  doubt  the  spiritual  crea- 
tion implies  the  indissoluble  marriage  of  creature  and  creator  in 
order  to  vitalize  it,  just  as  the  material  cosmos  implies  a  union 
of  substance  and  form,  subject  and  object,  genus  and  species,  in 
order  to  vitalize  it.     But  this  union  is  no  passive  or  barren  one 
in  either  case,  but  a  most  living  or  productive  union  ;  the  par- 
ties to  it  not  being  united  in  se  or  subjectively,  which  would  be 
to  confound  or  identify  them,  but  only  in  prolification  or  objec- 
tively, which  is  to  insure  their  utmost  individuality  or  difference. 
It  is  impossible,  in  short,  that  there  should  be  any  subjective 
identity,  but  only  the  utmost  conceivable  subjective  antagonism 
between  creator  and  creature  ;  for  the  one  is  all  fulness,  the 
other  all  want ;  the  one  all  power,  the  other  all  dependence. 
The  only  unity  they  can  aspire  to  consequently  is  an  objective 
one,  and  objective  unity  is  founded  upon  subjective  diversity, 
being  valid  or  feeble  just  as  that  diversity  is  profound  or  super- 
ficial.    Now  manifestly  the  subjective  antagonism  of  creator  and 
creature   can  never  become  avouched,  and  consequently  their 
objective  unity  never  become  realized,  unless  creation  be  organ- 
ized first  of  all  on  a  natural  basis  ;  that  is  to  say,  upon  the  basis 
of  the  creature's  felt  or  conscious  identity  in  himself,  and  thence 
of  his  logical  diversity  from  the  creator. 

In  short,  the  criterion  between  a  true  and  a  false  philosophy 
is  to  be  found  in  the  estimate  they  severally  put  upon  the  sub- 
jective element  in  experience,  or  the  function  of  consciousness  ; 
as  whether  it  furnishes  a  direct  or  only  an  inverse  analogy  of 


THE  SECEET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  197 

the  creative  truth.  The  absolute  truth  of  course  —  the  truth 
of  which  we  are  wholly  imconscious  —  is  that  God  alone  gives 
us  being,  and  that  unceasingly  ;  that  in  him  we  live  and  move 
and  have  our  being  at  every  moment.  The  apparent  or 
phenomenal  truth  —  the  only  truth  of  which  we  are  or  can  be 
conscious  —  is  that  we  have  our  life  or  being  in  ourselves  ;  and 
hence  that  the  creative  relation  to  us  is  not  inward  or  spiritual, 
involving  our  natural  generation,  or  the  gift  of  selfhood  to  us,  as 
form  involves  substance,  but  exclusively  an  outward  or  moral 
relation,  evolving  our  personal  absoluteness  towards  him,  as 
substance  evolves  form,  and  legitimating  therefore  on  our  part 
every  extreme  of  alternate  hope  and  fear.  Idealism  makes  this 
fallacious  testimony  of  consciousness  absolute  in  objectifying  the 
me,  or  giving  it  a  noumenal  as  well  as  phenomenal  truth,  an  un- 
conscious as  well  as  a  conscious  validity.  It  first  denaturalizes 
the  me,  or  discharges  it  of  finiteness,  by  making  nature  properly 
objective  to  it  under  the  name  of  the  not-me;  and  then  of 
course  it  is  left  free  to  spiritualize  it,  or  run  it  into  infinitude,  by 
giving  it  a  noumenal  or  unconscious  existence  more  real  and 
valid  than  its  phenomenal  or  conscious  one.  This  pretension 
gives  of  course  an  effectual  quietus  to  creation,  save  in  the  most 
juggling  and  mendicant  sense  of  the  term  ;  for  if  I  have  not 
only  a  phenomenal  or  conscious  subjectivity,  but  also,  and  much 
more  a  noumenal  or  unconscious  one,  it  is  not  of  the  least  im- 
portance where  you  see  fit  to  place  it,  —  whether  in  God  or  out 
of  him,  —  for  it  is  essentially  absolute  or  underived  ;  and  I  con- 
sequently am  an  uncreated  being,  whatever  sensible  appearances 
and  rational  probabilities  may  be  alleged  to  the  contrary. 

A  true  philosophy  —  a  philosophy  consonant  with  the  mind's 
perennial  needs  —  feels  none  of  this  morbid  itching  to  inflame 
the  subjective  element  in  consciousness  to  absolute  or  objective 
dimensions,  and  contentedly  leaves  it  purely  phenomenal. 
Whv  ?  Because  what  alone  a  true  philosophy  has  at  heart  is  to 
vindicate  the  spiritual  truth  of  creation ;  and  it  perceives  accord- 
ingly at  a  glance  that  that  truth  can  never  be  vindicated,  but 
only  refuted,  if  the  creature  may  rightfully  claim  in  himself  not 
merely  an  actual  or  conscious  life,  but  also  a  real  or  unconscious 
and  absolute  one.  For  in  that  case  evidently  the  created  sub- 
jectivity overlaps  and  appropriates  to  itself  the  creative  one  ; 


198  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

and  creation  philosophically  viewed  is  anything  but  the  subjective 
muddling    or  confounding  of  creator  and  creature,  which  the 
Hegelian  dialectic  makes  of  it.    It  is  in  fact  their  sharpest  possible, 
or  infinite  and  eternal,  subjective  discrimination  in  order  to  their 
only  possible  subsequent  objective   union.      The   inexpugnable 
necessity  of  all  true  creation  is,  that  the  creature  be  subjectively 
or  in  se  totally  alien  to,  and  unidentified  with,  the  creator  ;  for 
unless  there  be  this  subjective  disunion  to  begin  with,  how  shall 
we  claim  their  subsequent  objective  or  spiritual  union  ?     Obvi- 
ously if  the  statue,  the  house,  the  pump,  the  watch,  the  table, 
the  pitcher,  the  ship,  the  engine,  I  make  or  give  ideal  form  to,  be- 
comes actually  made  only  in  so  far  as  I  concede  to  the  demands 
of    its  subjectivity,  in  giving  it  projection  from  myself  by  the 
mediation   of  some    neutral  substance,  so    a  fortiori  the  things 
which  God  creates  or  gives  moral    form  to    can  only  become 
created  in  so  far  forth  as  he  endows  them  first  of  all  with  sub- 
jective   existence    or   selfhood,    which  shall    eternally   alienate 
them  from —  i.  e.  make  them  other  than  —  himself.     If  the  life- 
less things  we  make  subjectively  alienate  themselves  from  us 
their   maker,  and   ally  themselves   exclusively   with    the   base 
material  out  of  which  they  are  made,  so  with  far  greater  reason 
must  the  living  creatures  of  God  repugn  all  subjective  identity 
with  their  creator,  and  tolerate  at  most  only  an  objective  or  un- 
conscious relation  to  him.     I  say  "  with  far  greater  reason  "  : 
for  manifestly  the  disproportion  between  creator  and  creature  is 
infinitely  greater  than  that  between  maker  and  made :  between 
painter  and  picture,  for  example  :  so  that  whatever  can  be  alleged 
in  the  way  of  contrast  between  the  constituents  of  the  lesser  re- 
lation   is    infinitely  more    true    in   application   to  those  of  the 
grander  relation.     If  then  the  unconscious  effigy  of  man  I  pro- 
duce from  the  reluctant  marble,  vividly  disown  all  substantial 
or  subjective  identity  with  myself,  in  restricting  my  activity  to 
the  interests  exclusively  of  its  ideal  form,  or  objective  individu- 
ality, much  more  vividly  must  the  breathing,  conscious,  exultant 
man  himself  refuse  to  identify  his  proper  subjectivity  or  self- 
hood with  the  power  that  creates  him ;  and  relegate  the  total 
activity  of  that  power  to  the  depths  of  his  spiritual,  objective, 

and  therefore  unconscious  beincr. 

& 

Thus  a  true  philosophy  will  never  be  found  exalting  the  me. 


THE   SECRET   OF   SWEDENBORG.  199 

or  subjective  element  in  experience,  out  of  conscious  or  phe- 
nomenal into  absolute  or  noumenal  proportions ;  for  the  simple 
but  sufficing  reason  that  any  such  procedure  must  be  fatal  to 
the  integrity  of  creation,  and  hence  to  consciousness.  For  con- 
sciousness is  the  invariable  badge  of  created  existence,  being  the 
product  in  every  case  of  a  marriage  be'tween  creator  and 
creature;  and  if  accordingly  you  divest  my  subjectivity  of  its 
purely  conscious  or  phenomenal  character,  as  you  do  when  you 
make  it  noumenal  or  absolute,  you  instantly  reduce  me  to 
essential  unconsciousness,  or  turn  me  into  uncreated  being,  which 
is  God.  The  only  guaranty  of  continued  or  permanent  ex- 
istence which  I  as  a  created  being  enjoy,  is  what  is  furnished  by 
my  ineffaceable  natural  identity.  Destroy  this,  and  you  destroy 
my  sole  and  total  ground  of  consciousness,  or  doom  me  to 
absorption  in  the  infinite.  The  more  thoroughly  and  exquisitely 
I  am  myself —  the  more  intense  and  expansive  my  self-conscious- 
ness —  the  more  thorough  and  exquisite,  of  course,  on  the  one 
hand,  will  be  my  subjective  or  felt  alienation  from  God,  but  also 
and  for  this  very  reason,  on  the  other  hand,  the  more  profound 
and  intimate  my  objective  or  real  sympathy  and  conjunction 
with  him.  No  doubt  the  creative  love  is  infinite,  or  will 
always  be  able  to  bless  its  creature  beyond  his  hopes  or  desires. 
But  a  prior  condition  of  such  beatitude  on  the  creature's  part 
is,  that  he  exist  in  himself,  enjoy  phenomenal  selfhood  or  free- 
dom, undergo  subjective  or  conscious  estrangement  from  his 
creator.  If,  for  example,  the  creature  should  be  in  himself  or 
naturally  godlike,  he  could  not  be  accessible  to  the  subsequent 
divine  benefaction,  because  he  would  already  possess  in  himself  or 
absolutely  whatsoever  such  benefaction  implies.  But  if,  on  the 
contrary,  he  be  se^-alienated,  self-projected,  se?f-distanced  from 
God  to  the  extent  of  a  sheer  oppugnancy,  he  will  then  be  in  the 
best  —  and  indeed  only  —  possible  condition  of  receptivity  to- 
wards the  divine  communication,  and  will  react  upon  it  with  the 
total  force  of  his  nature.  Hence  I  say  that  God  spiritually 
creates  us  or  causes  us  objectively  to  be,  only  in  so  far  as  he 
empowers  us  first  of  all  subjectively  to  appear,  or  exist  in  our 
own  natural  lineaments,  our  own  inextinguishable  self-conscious- 
ness :  which  is  only  saying,  in  a  less  concise  way,  that  our  natural 
or  moral  history  is  a  necessary  involution,  and  not  evolution,  of 
our  spiritual  creation. 


200  THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG. 

I  hope  that  none  of  my  readers  will  dispose  himself  to  reject 
these  observations,  simply  because  they  are  in  advance  of  re- 
ceived maxims.  It  is  my  own  firm  conviction  that  the  real 
source  of  the  popular  disesteem  into  which  philosophy  has  fallen, 
is  traceable  to  nothing  in  philosophy  itself,  but  exclusively  to  the 
indolent  and  imbecile  habit  philosophers  have  of  confounding 
philosophy  with  science,  or  identifying  the  realm  of  our  spiritual 
being  with  that  of  our  moral  or  natural  existence. 

Our  moral  existence  —  our  natural  manhood  —  is  a  mere  con- 
stitutional implication  of  our  spiritual  being ;  a  mere  incident  of 
our  God-ward  or  objective  possibilities ;  and  hence  it  is  void  to 
philosophy  of  substantive  or  independent  worth.  Philosophy  — 
it  cannot  be  too  sharply  nor  too  often  affirmed  —  is  directly  con- 
cerned only  with  truths  of  being,  which  lie  within  or  above  con- 
sciousness. Science,  on  the  contrary,  is  directly  concerned  only 
with  facts  of  existence,  which  lie  without  or  below  consciousness. 
In  other  words,  the  realm  of  philosophy  proper  is  the  uncon- 
scious realm,  the  realm  of  the  not-me;  while  the  realm  of 
science  is  exclusively  the  conscious  realm,  the  realm  of  the  me. 
Briefer  still,  philosophy  deals  only  with  man's  inorganic  inter- 
ests :  science  with  his  organic  ones.  These  two  realms  —  the  or- 
ganic and  inorganic  one,  the  me  and  the  not-me,  science  and 
philosophy  —  are  subjectively  most  opposite,  being  objectively 
fused  or  united  only  in  life,  which  is  the  experience  of  a  rational 
subject.  For  example  :  I  am  identified  to  my  own  conscious- 
ness with  my  organization,  that  is  to  say,  with  the  realm  of  my 
relations  to  nature  and  my  fellow- man,  and  so  far  of  course  I 
am  a  legitimate  object  of  scientific  research,  analysis,  and 
augury.  But  I  am  yet  all  the  while  being  unconsciously  indi- 
vidualized —  i.  e.  set  free  from  the  bondage  of  my  natural  iden- 
tity, lifted  above  the  realm  of  my  relations  to  nature  and  society 
—  by  a  most  subtle  inward  chemistry  which  converts  all  that 
luxuriant  show  of  moral  life  in  me  into  an  evidence  or  attesta- 
tion of  a  profounder  spiritual  death.  Were  I  left  to  the  sole 
tutelage  of  my  rational  instincts,  or  the  conclusions  of  the  scien- 
tific understanding,  I  should  doubtless  never  detect  this  subter- 
ranean murmur  of  death,  nor  ever  dream  consequently  of  that 
realm  of  life  immortal  and  ineffable,  to  which  death  is  the  only 
practicable  passage.  On  the  contrary,  I  should  go  on  to  suppose 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBORG.  201 

that  everything  really  is  as  it  seems  ;  and  that  our  true  indi- 
viduality consequently  is  not  the  regenerate  spiritual  one  we  de- 
rive from  God,  but  the  generic  moral  one  which  we  derive  from 
our  race  or  past  ancestry.  But  conscience  is  the  divine  safe- 
guard interposed  to  obviate  this  fatality.  It  is  the  cherubic 
sword  which  turns  every  way  to  bar  all  access  to  the  tree  of  life, 
on  the  part  of  those  who  contentedly  munch  the  fruit  of  the  tree 
of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and  demand  no  diviner  nourish- 
ment. Or,  to  say  the  same  thing  in  less  figurative  speech,  the 
incessant  office  of  conscience,  wherever  it  exists  in  unadulterate 
potency,  is  to  give  its  subject  a  pungent  conviction  of  the 
spiritual  disease,  disorder,  and  death  which  vitalize  his  most 
flowering  and  fruitful  and  faultless  moral  consciousness ;  a  living 
experience  of  the  abject  and  absolute  dearth  of  good  which 
underlies  and  inwardly  answers  to  all  that  outward  vigor  and 
plenitude  of  life. 

The  regenerate  individuality  which  is  thus  wrought  in  us  by 
the  divine  power,  through  the  humiliation  of  our  moral  righte- 
ousness, is,  I  repeat,  a  totally  unconscious  one,  being  made  up 
of  our  relations  to  a  good  which  is  infinite,  and  a  truth  which  is 
absolute.  It  is  not  therefore,  however,  any  the  less,  but  only 
all  the  more  real.  The  sole  realm  of  unreality  is  the  conscious 
realm,  the  realm  of  the  me  ;  because  manifestly  the  me  is  a  purely 
finite  or  phenomenal  existence,  conditioned  as  to  its  lower  or 
sensitive  forms  upon  a  rigid  equilibrium  of  pleasure  and  pain, 
and  as  to  its  higher  or  rational  and  moral  forms,  upon  a  rigid 
equilibrium  of  good  and  evil ;  and  incapable  in  either  case  of 
surviving  a  permanent  disturbance  of  such  equilibrium.  Let 
pleasure  or  pain  acquire  an  absolute  ascendency  in  my  organiza- 
tion, and  the  organization  will  instantly  cease  to  endure.  Let 
good  or  evil  obtain  an  absolute  ascendency  of  my  will,  and  the 
will  itself  instantly  disappears.  Our  voluntary,  which  is  our 
moral  and  rational  force,  is  contingent  upon  such  an  exact 
though  unrecognized  balance  of  good  and  evil  in  the  social 
sphere,  or  the  world  of  our  relations  to  our  fellow-men,  as  leaves 
us  consciously  free,  or  invests  us  with  the  felt  ownership  of  our 
own  actions ;  just  as  our  instinctual  or  sensitive  life,  which  is 
what  we  have  in  common  with  mineral,  plant,  and  animal,  is 
contingent  upon  such  an  exact  though  unrecognized  balance  of 


202  THE  SECRET  OF  SWEDENBORG. 

pleasure  and  pain  in  the  physical  sphere,  or  the  realm  of  our  re- 
lations to  nature,  as  makes  us  sensibly  free,  or  invests  us  also 
with  the  felt  ownership  of  our  appetites  and  passions.  We 
have  no  absolute,  but  only  a  conscious  or  phenomenal,  control 
either  of  our  own  actions  or  our  own  passions ;  all  the  power  we 
possess  in  either  case  being  contingent  upon  our  relations  to 
nature  and  society.  And  if  this  be  so,  if  our  conscious  life, 
the  experience  we  have  of  ourselves  as  posited  by  nature  and 
society,  claim  no  absolute  but  only  a  contingent  worth,  no  ob- 
jective but  only  a  subjective  reality,  then  clearly  we  are  justified 
in  saying  that  the  conscious  realm,  the  realm  of  the  me,  is  with 
respect  to  the  unconscious  realm,  the  realm  of  the  not-me,  a 
pure  illusion  or  unreality  ;  and  hence  that  whatsoever  legitimate 
interest  it  affords  to  science,  all  whose  research  is  limited  to  what 
is  finite  and  relative  in  existence,  it  yet  offers  only  a  reflected 
interest  to  philosophy,  since  philosophy  never  sees  in  the  finite 
anything  but  a  most  specious  mask  or  cloak  of  the  infinite,  in 
the  relative  anything  but  a  most  subtle  revelation  of  the  absolute ; 
with  a  view  in  both  cases  alike  to  the  gradual  and  eventually 
complete  propitiation  of  our  obdurate  and  brutisli  intelligence. 

Thus  philosophy  is  science  no  longer  controlled  by  sense,  but 
enlightened  by  revelation.  Science  instructed  by  sense  puts 
an  eternal  divorce  between  creator  and  creature,  by  reciprocally 
finiting  them,  or  proving  them  both  alike  subject  to  the  laws  of 
space,  time,  and  person.  But  science  enlightened  by  revelation 
reciprocally  infinites  creator  and  creature,  i.  e.  denies  every 
real  and  allows  only  a  logical  contrariety  between  them,  by 
showing  the  laws  of  space,  time,  and  person  to  be  sheerly  il- 
lusory, as  possessing  a  purely  subjective  and  by  no  means  ob- 
jective virtue.  That  is  to  say,  it  exhibits  a  doctrine  of  creation 
which  perfectly  reconciles  the  creative  and  the  created  natures, 
by  showing  the  creature  (subjectively  regarded)  to  be  the 
creator  himself  naturally  finited :  i.  e.  identified  with  all  ani- 
mal, all  vegetable,  and  all  mineral  substance  ;  and  the  creator 
(objectively  regarded)  to  be  the  creature  himself  spiritually 
infinited:  i.  e.  individualized  in  human  form,  and  eternally  re- 
deemed from  all  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  limitation.  He 
is  our  substance,  and  we  are  his  form  or  semblance.  He  is  our 
being,  and  we  are  his  seeming  or  image.  But  as  the  law  of  the 


THE  SECRET   OF  SWEDENBOEG.  203 

form  or  image  is,  that  it  be  in  itself  an  inversion  of  the  sub- 
stance which  projects  it,  so  the  whole  aim  of  God's  providence  in 
nature  and  history  is  to  redeem  us  from  the  tyranny  of  this  law, 
by  converting  us  out  of  inverse  natural  images  of  his  perfection, 
into  a  direct  spiritual  likeness  of  it ;  which  he  does  by  exalting 
our  consciousness  out  of  its  physical  and  moral  rudiments,  into 
perfected  social  and  aesthetic  form.  Practically  then,  according 
to  Swedenborg,  the  one  thing  needful  to  the  permanent  recon- 
struction of  philosophy,  is  its  frank,  intelligent  acknowledgment 
of  the  divine  NATURAL  humanity :  crucified,  dead,  and  buried 
in  all  the  forms  of  our  natural  —  or  physical  and  moral  —  con- 
sciousness, in  which  the  vir,  or  feminine  and  individual  element, 
is  seen  to  be  pitiably  servile  to  the  homo,  or  masculine  and 
universal  element ;  but  glorified,  risen  again,  triumphant  over 
death  and  hell,  in  all  the  forms  of  our  regenerate  —  or  social 
and  aesthetic  —  consciousness,  where  the  homo  or  created  man  is 
seen  no  longer  coercing,  but  assiduously  promoting,  the  vir  or 
creative  man.  This  appears  to  me  the  plain  philosophic  import 
of  Swedenborg's  teaching,  that  our  intellectual  resurrection  out 
of  the  mire  of  sense  —  which  is  the  final  evolution  of  the 
human  mind  in  complete  harmony  with  God's  perfection  —  is 
rigidly  contingent  upon  our  renouncing  our  old  and  fallacious 
subjective  conception  of  life,  as  being  primarily  universal  or 
natural,  and  only  subordinately  thereto  individual  or  spiritual, 
and  cordially  acknowledging  it  henceforth  in  its  new  or  real  and 
objective  aspect,  as  being  essentially  spiritual  or  individual,  and 
only  existentially,  i.  e.  by  the  strictest  derivation  thence,  natural 
or  universal.  In  other  words,  the  future  progress  of  the  mind 
depends  upon  our  faithfully  separating  between  two  things 
which  have  been  hitherto  hopelessly  confounded,  being  and 
existence,  life  and  death,  freedom  and  bondage :  the  former 
interest  comprehending  the  entire  realm  of  man's  social  and 
aesthetic  objectivity,  which  lifts  him  forever  out  of  himself  and 
allies  him  eternally  with  God,  by  making  delight  not  duty, 
spontaneity  not  will,  freedom  not  force,  the  exclusive  rule  of  his 
action ;  the  latter  comprehending  the  entire  realm  of  his  phys- 
ical and  moral  subjectivity,  which  immerses  him  eternally  in  him- 
self, by  making  him  and  keeping  him  the  helpless  and  dis- 
honored tool  of  nature  and  convention. 


APPENDIX. 


APPENDIX. 


NOTE  A.     Page  12. 

IN  recommending  Mr.  White's  biography  to  my  readers  as  altogether 
the  best  life  of  Swedenborg  extant,  I  feel  bound  to  say  at  the  same 
time  that  1  differ  from  him  utterly  in  many  of  his  incidental  judgments 
of  Swedenborg,  some  of  which  seem  to  me  simply  prudish,  and  almost 
wilfully  ungracious  and  ungenerous  to  his  subject,  notably  those  relating 
to  the  inferential  injustice  done  by  Swedenborg  to  woman.  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  Mr.  White's  private  animosity  to  the  swedenborgian 
sect  has  insensibly  tempted  him  to  a  somewhat  capricious  disregard 
of  his  author's  fair  fame  before  the  world.  Every  sincere  student  of 
Swedenborg  —  that  is  to  say,  every  one  who  appreciates  the  enormous 
but  distinctively  impersonal  or  philosophic  benefits  his  books  are  des- 
tined to  confer  upon  the  intellect  —  must  along  with  Mr.  White  regret 
to  see  his  harmless  name  perverted  to  the  ends  of  a  petty  sectarian 
ambition,  and  even  made  to  sanction  what  seems  to  be  a  particularly 
gratuitous  exhibition  of  ecclesiastical  zeal.  But  this  sort  of  thing 
should  not  tempt  us  into  any  injustice  towards  Swedenborg  himself, 
who  has  as  little  responsibility  for  it  as  the  babe  unborn.  Indeed  I 
should  be  sorry  to  hold  the  members  of  the  swedenborgian  sect  them- 
selves responsible  for  the  glamour  they  have  cast  upon  Swedenborg's 
good  name.  On  the  contrary,  I  feel  a  sincere  respect  for  these  gentle- 
men, within  the  very  limited  range  of  my  knowledge  of  them,  and  am 
very  glad  to  concede  that  nothing  but  the  insane  spirit  of  sect  could 
have  tempted  men  so  amiable  to  engage  in  their  unhandsome  enterprise. 
None  of  the  older  sects  parades  a  pretension  at  once  so  senseless  and  so 
blasphemous  as  they  do,  when  they  advertise  themselves  to  the  world 
as  the  New  Jerusalem,  or  the  end  of  all  divine  prophecy  and  promise 
for  man  upon  earth  and  in  heaven.  Just  conceive  of  the  New 
Jerusalem  deliberately  posing  for  the  world's  recognition !  In  fact 
just  think  of  any  one  who  has  ever  breathed  a  breath  of  God's  life  in 
our  nature,  turning  out  such  an  incontinent  peacock  as  to  publish  the 
fact,  or  overtly  profess  to  constitute  a  divine  consummation  in  the 
earth  !  No  doubt  these  persons  would  promptly  disown,  in  their  civic 


208  APPENDIX. 

capacity,  the  small  and  vulgar  arrogance  they  habitually  exhibit  in 
their  ecclesiastical  aspect.  But  what  does  this  prove  ?  Nothing  what- 
ever but  that  they  unwittingly  allow  their  sectarian  animus  gravely  to 
compromise  the  unblemished  private  repute  which  they  would  otherwise 
be  entitled  to  enjoy. 

My  friend,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Barrett,  put  forth  a  little  book  not  long 
since  bearing  upon  the  sins  of  his  people,  which  was  entitled  Catholicity 
of  the  New-  Church,  and  Uncatholicity  of  New-  Churchmen,  and  in  which 
he  undertook  to  show,  while  viewing  the  new  church  as  a  strict  eccle- 
siasticism,  that  it  had  no  right  whatever  to  an  ecclesiastical  temper.  I 
never  could  comprehend  the  logic  of  my  friend's  demonstration.  For 
surely  if  the  new  church  be  ecclesiastically  constituted,  its  members 
can  hardly  do  otherwise  than  cultivate  an  ecclesiastical  spirit.  If  what 
my  friend  calls  the  new  church  be  catholic  in  its  spirit,  then  surely 
new-churchmen  cannot  be  uncatholic  in  theirs.  For,  as  Mr.  Barrett's 
favorite  author  would  say,  churchmen  exist  only  from  the  church,  as 
the  church  in  its  turn  subsists  only  by  them.  There  is  no  church  with- 
out churchmen,  and  no  churchmen  without  a  church ;  any  more  than 
there  is  a  soul  without  a  body,  or  a  body  without  a  soul.  Whatsoever 
any  visible  church  is,  its  members  are,  and  whatsoever  its  members  are 
the  church  is.  If  Mr.  Barrett  hold  that  the  new  church  is  a  corporate 
organization  with  corporate  rites  and  ceremonies,  he  has  no  business  to 
go  beyond  its  visible  corporeity  to  get  at  its  soul  or  spirit.  What  is 
visible  about  it  alone  declares  what  is  invisible,  and  he  has  manifestly 
no  right  to  allege  of  the  latter  what  does  not  strictly  belong  to  the 
former.  If  the  church  be  catholic  its  members  must  be  catholic,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  the  church  has  no  existence  apart  from  its  mem- 
bers. If,  again,  Mr.  Barrett  holds  that  the  church  is  a  spiritual  insti- 
tution exclusively,  being  nothing  less  than  the  invisible  life  of  God  in 
the  soul  of  man,  then  clearly  its  members  are  not  to  be  carnally  but 
spiritually  discerned  and  estimated.  So  far  as  they  belong  to  the 
church,  they  are  invisible  to  the  eye  of  sense,  and  reveal  their  existence 
only  to  those  who  are  of  a  similar  spirit  or  character  with  them.  In 
this  state  of  things  Mr.  Barrett  is  entitled  to  say :  "  The  new  church  is 
catholic  in  spirit,  and  any  specific  A,  B,  or  C  who  foolishly  parades  its 
name  to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest  of  mankind  is  therefore  a  spiritual 
sot."  But  he  is  not  entitled  to  say  abstractly,  that  while  the  new  church 
is  catholic,  new-churchmen  themselves  have  any  power  to  be  other- 
wise. 

The  fact  is,  Mr.  Barrett  has  been  keeping  bad  company,  and  has 
thereby  got  his  perceptions  somewhat  clouded.  He  is  a  lover  of 
Swedenborg,  a  disinterested  lover,  who  values  his  author  for  his  broad 


APPENDIX.  209 

human  worth  altogether,  and  not  for  any  advantage  which  may  possibly 
accrue  to  his  own  ecclesiastical  ambition.  Having  this  honest  admira- 
tion of  Swedenborg,  it  naturally  afflicts  him  to  see  his  great  services  to 
mankind  attempted  to  be  monopolized  by  the  preposterous  little  sect 
which  unblushingly  styles  itself  The  New  Jerusalem  (or  God's  finished 
work  in  human  nature),  and  thus  betrays  Swedenborg  to  the  just  sus- 
picion of  all  modest  persons.  Mr.  Barrett's  book  proves  that  these 
people  know  nothing  worth  telling  of  Swedenborg,  and  that  they  are 
capable,  in  their  corporate  capacity,  of  a  petty  ecclesiastical  tyranny  and 
dishonesty  which  the  more  experienced  sects  are  getting  ashamed  of. 
But  then  the  wonder  is  that  he  should  afflict  himself  with  their  mis- 
deeds. Why  does  he  not  rather  abandon  the  whole  concern,  and  bless 
God,  as  Dogberry  says,  that  he  is  rid  of  an  encumbrance  ?  The  reason 
doubtless  is  that  Mr.  Barrett  himself  is  still  too  much  victimized  by 
that  wretched  sophistry  which  forever  unspiritualizes  the  church,  in 
identifying  it  with  some  specific  apparatus  of  priest  and  sacrifice  that 
once  symbolized  it  when  it  was  itself  nonexistent,  or  as  yet  only  in 
the  gristle. 

He  is  thus  all  the  while  unconsciously  ministering  to  the  spirit  he 
condemns.  For  it  is  impossible  that  any  man,  or  any  set  of  men, 
should  esteem  themselves  personally  or  ritually  more  acceptable  to 
God  than  others,  without  being  to  that  extent  spiritually  depraved. 
As  long,  therefore,  as  Mr.  Barrett  and  other  conscientious  students  of 
Swedenborg  fidget  themselves  about  any  ecclesiastical  organization 
whatever,  as  falling  within  the  scope  of  new  church  principles,  this 
little  sect,  that  now  worries  them  so  much,  will  never  be  hurt,  but  only 
helped  by  their  opposition.  For,  with  the  class  of  people  who  can  be 
duped  by  this  shallow  conception  of  the  church,  a  present  possession  of 
the  territory  in  dispute  is  nine  points  of  the  law.  The  sect,  in  short, 
needs  advertising ;  and  Mr.  Barrett,  in  spite  of  himself,  is  made  to  sup- 
ply this  want,  so  long  as  he  makes  the  new  church  a  visible  economy 
in  the  earth,  and  only  quarrels  with  some  peculiarities  of  its  transient 
administration. 

The  swedenborgian  sect  assumes  to  be  the  New  Jerusalem,  which  is 
the  figurative  name  used  in  the  Apocalypse  to  denote  God's  perfected 
spiritual  work  in  human  nature ;  and  under  this  tremendous  designation 
it  is  content  to  employ  itself  in  doing  —  what  ?  why  in  pouring  new 
wine  into  old  bottles  with  such  a  preternatural  solicitude  for  the  tena- 
city of  the  bottles,  as  necessitates  an  altogether  comical  indifference  to 
the  quality  of  the  wine.  New  wine  cannot  safely  go  into  old  bottles 
but  upon  one  condition,  which  is,  that  the  wine  had  previously  become 
swipes,  or  was  originally  very  small  beer.  In  fact,  the  swedenborgian 
14 


210  APPENDIX. 

sect,  viewed  as  to  its  essential  aims,  though  of  course  not  as  to  its  pro- 
fessed ones,  is  only  on  the  part  of  its  movers  a  strike  for  higher  wages, 
that  is,  for  higher  ecclesiastical  consideration  than  the  older  sects  en- 
joy at  the  popular  hands.  And  like  all  strikes,  it  will  probably  suc- 
cumb at  last  to  the  immense  stores  of  fat  (or  popular  respect)  tradition- 
ally accumulated  under  the  ribs  of  the  old  organizations,  and  enabling 
them  to  hybernate  through  any  stress  of  cold  weather,  merely  by  suck- 
ing their  thumbs,  or  without  assimilating  any  new  material.  No  doubt 
the  insurgents  impoverish  the  older  sects  to  the  extent  of  their  own 
bulk ;  but  they  do  not  substantially  affect  them  in  popular,  regard,  be- 
cause the  people,  as  a  rule,  care  little  for  truth,  but  much  for  the  good 
that  animates  it ;  very  little  for  dogmas,  but  very  much  for  that  un- 
deniably human  substance  which  underlies  all  dogmas,  and  makes  them 
savory,  whether  technically  sound  or  unsound.  And  here  the  new  sect 
is  at  a  striking  disadvantage  with  all  its  more  ancient  competitors  ;  for 
these  are  getting  ashamed  of  their  old  narrowness,  and  are  gradually 
expanding  into  some  show  of  sympathy  with  human  want.  The  sect 

/  of  the  soi-disanl  New  Jerusalem,  on  the  other  hand,  deliberately  empties 
itself  of  all  interest  in  the  hallowed  struggle  which  society  is  every- 
where making  for  her  very  existence  against  established  injustice  and 
sanctified  imposture,  in  order  to  concentrate  its  energy  and  prudence 
upon  the  washing  and  dressing,  upon  the  larding  and  stuffing,  upon  the 
embalming  and  perfuming,  of  its  own  invincibly  squalid  little  corpus. 
This  pharisaic  spirit,  the  spirit  of  separatism  or  sect,  is  the  identical 
spirit  of  hell ;  and  to  attempt  compassing  any  consideration  for  one's  self 

"at  the  divine  hands,  by  making  one's  self  to  differ  from  other  people,  or 
claiming  a  higher  divine  sanctity  than  they  enjoy,  is  to  encounter  the 
only  sure  damnation.  According  to  Swedenborg,  or  rather  according 

1  to  the  gospel  of  the  lord  Jesus  Christ,  of  which  he  was  in  all  things  the 
unflinching  echo,  a  literal  or  differential  righteousness  among  men  is  in- 
compatible with  their  spiritual  safety ;  because  every  man  is  saved  by 
virtue  of  his  unity  with  his  kind,  and  not  in  contravention  of  it.  In 
short,  natural  fact  or  seeming  is,  according  to  the  evangelic  doctrine, 
the  invariable  inverse  of  spiritual  truth  or  being ;  and  the  most  fault- 
less surface,  therefore,  of  outward  or  moral  decorum,  is  apt  to  cover 
the  most  odious  depths  of  inward  or  spiritual  obliquity. 

/  Let  the  reader  then,  whatever  else  he  may  fairly  or  foolishly  con- 
•  elude  against  Swedenborg,  acquit  him  point-blank  of  countenancing  this 
abject  ecclesiastical  drivel,  this  sectarian  "  second  childhood  and  mere 
oblivion,"  with  which  people  who  ought  to  know  better  are  availing 
themselves  of  the  popular  ignorance  concerning  him,  to  push  them- 
selves into  ecclesiastical  consideration.  No  one  who  comes  to  Sweden- 


APPENDIX.  211 

borg's  books  without  some  latent  intention  to  eke  out  his  own  dilap- 
idated ecclesiastical  drapery  by  skilful  picking  and  stealing  among  the 
angels,  can  help  seeing  that  no  more  unsavory  name  than  his  could 
possibly  be  employed  wherewith  to  bait  sectarian  mouse-traps.  He  is 
no  blear-eyed  Rip  Van  Winkle  dug  up  out  of  the  drowsy  past  to  affront 
the  lively  present,  but  a  man  of  the  freshest  sympathies,  and  principles 
that  contemplate  only  the  broadest  or  most  impersonal  human  issues. 
In  a  word,  he  is  an  unaffectedly  genial,  wise,  and  good  man,  all  the 
higher  parts  of  whose  mind  are  bathed  in  the  peace  and  light  of  heaven, 
and  who  aspires  to  no  manner  of  leadership  among  men,  because  the 
access  of  an  interior  life  has  weaned  him  from  that  restless  bondage. 
And  yet,  to  say  nothing  of  the  endless  charm  of  truth  in  reference  to 
the  highest  themes  in  which  Swedenborg's  writings  abound,  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  unconscious  incomparable  realism  of  their  style  prophesies" 
a  new  literature.  How  a  man  can  leave  his  own  personality  so  wholly 
behind  him  as  to  disown  every  faintest  grimace  of  conventional  literary 
art,  and  become  absolutely  lost  to  your  regard  in  the  sheer  splendor  of 
the  truth  he  recounts,  is  a  daily  wonder  to  me. 

The  gigantic  reach  of  the  man's  mind,  too,  in  bringing  back  every 
subtlest  ineffable  splendor  of  heaven,  and  every  subtlest  ineffable  hor- 
ror of  hell,  to  the  purest  phenomenality,  to  the  mere  shadowy  at- 
testation, positive  and  negative,  of  a  Divine  Natural  Manhood,  which 
they  are  both  alike  impotent  to  create,  or  even  by  themselves  to  con- 
stitute ;  his  vast  erudition,  untouched  by  pedantry,  and  never  for  an  in- 
stant lending  itself  to  display;  his  guileless  modesty  under  the  most 
unexampled  experiences;  his  tender  humility  and  ready  fellowship 
with  every  lowest  form  of  good ;  the  free,  unconscious  movement  of 
his  thought,  reflected  from  the  great  calm  realities  with  which  he  was 
in  habitual  intellectual  contact';  his  unstudied  speech,  bubbling  up  at 
times  into  a  childish  naivete  and  simplicity,  —  all  these  things,  while  they 
take  his  books  out  of  the  category  of  mere  literary  performances,  and 
convert  them  into  an  epoch,  as  it  were,  of  our  associated  mental  history, 
—  into  a  great  upheaval  or  insurrection  of  the  human  mind  itself,  —  yet 
assuredly  reduce  the  feats  of  our  sincerest  theologians  and  philosophers 
to  the  dimensions  of  ignorant  prattle,  and  turn  the  performances  of  our 
ordinary  literary  posturemongers  into  stale  and  mercenary  circus  tricks. 

It  is  sheer  fatuity  to  conceive  a  man  like  this  aspiring  "to  clean  out 
meeting-houses,"  or  projecting  any  such  frivolity  and  futility  as  eccle- 
siastical reform.  He  was  not  a  bit  of  a  sexton,  and  the  mind  of  an 
undertaker  dwelt  not  in  him.  His  intercourse  was  wholly  among  the 
living ;  death,  in  the  undertaker's  sense  of  that  phenomenon,  having 
lost  all  sanctity  to  his  imagination,  by  revealing  its  long  imposture,  and 


212  APPENDIX. 

confessing  itself  no  more  the  finished  flower  of  life,  but  its  succulent 
root  and  beginning ;  no  more  its  lurid,  menacing  west,  but  its  dewy, 
tender,  and  most  motherly  east.  In  fact,  Swedenborg  saw  that  the 
most  sacredly  established  life  of  Christendom,  which  was  its  ecclesias- 
tical life,  constituted  its  profoundest  death ;  and  he  accordingly  never 
counselled  nor  contemplated  any  resuscitation  for  that  life,  but  only 
from  it.  To  this  figurative  extent  it  is  true  that  no  undertaker  ever 
betrayed  a  jollier  scent  of  mortality  than  he.  But  then,  unlike  the 
undertaker,  he  left  the  dead  to  do  their  own  burying,  and  went  on  him- 
self to  describe  the  New  Jerusalem,  not  by  any  means  as  a  more  trinket- 
ted  set  of  literal  Jews,  complacently  arrogating  to  themselves  that 
sacred  repute,  in  disparagement  of  an  old  tarnished  set,  but  exclusively 
as  A  NEW  LIFE  IN  MAN,  coextensive  with  the  lord's  unseen  presence 
and  operation  in  the  natural  sphere  of  the  mind ;  or,  what  is  the  same 
thing,  with  the  redeemed  and  regenerate  nature  of  man.  He  never 
lets  fall  a  syllable  from  which  you  might  infer  that  he  conceived  the 
momentous  changes  taking  place  in  the  spiritual  world  or  the  realm  of 
mind  to  involve  the  slightest  interference  with  the  existing  ecclesiasti- 
cisms.  Describing  "  the  last  judgment "  which  took  place,  he  affirms, 
in  the  world  of  spirits  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  and  which  he  pro- 
fesses to  have  seen  in  great  part,  he  says  that  "  the  state  of  the  church 
will  be  henceforth  similar  outwardly,  but  dissimilar  inwardly  ;  Jbecause 
the  man  of  the  church  will  enjoy  more  freedom  of  thought  on  matters 
of  faith,  or  on  spiritual  things  which  relate  to  heaven,  spiritual  liberty 
having  been  restored  to  him.  For  all  things  in  the  heavens  and  the 
hells  are  now  reduced  into  order "  ;  and  so  forth.  Again  he  says  : 
"  I  have  had  various  conversations  with  the  angels  concerning  the  state 
of  the  church  hereafter.  They  said  that  things  to  come  they  know 
not,  such  knowledge  belonging  to  the  lord  alone ;  but  that  they  do 
know  that  the  slavery  and  captivity  in  which  the  man  of  the  church 
has  heretofore  been  is  removed,  and  that  now  from  restored  liberty  he 
can  better  perceive  spiritual  truths."  I  quote  from  his  tract  entitled 
The  Last  Judgment,  73,  74. 

The  moral  of  my  story  is  that  no  one  has  the  least  right  to  make 
Swedenborg  the  stalkingThorse  of  his  own  spiritual  imbecility ;  and 
that  if  any  of  my  readers  would  inquire  wisely  concerning  that  author, 
he  should  by  all  means  consult  his  writings  at  first-hand,  and  leave  the 
swedenborgians  diligently  alone  ;  just  as  in  inquiring  about  Moses,  he 
would  consult  the  pentateuch  and  ignore  Chatham  street;  or  about 
Christ,  he  would  consult  the  gospels  only,  and  give  a  very  wide  berth 
indeed  to  the  pope  of  Rome  and  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury. 

I  may  as  well  in  this  connection  notice  a  recent  work  by  Mr.  Tafel, 


APPENDIX.  213 

of  Chicago,  called  Emanuel  Swedenborg  as  Philosopher  and  Man  of 
Science.  It  is  an  affectionate  and  even  enthusiastic  tribute  to  Sweden- 
borg's  unrecognized  merits  as  a  philosopher  and  man  of  science,  made 
up  of  the  various  eulogistic  notices  his  life  and  writings  have  attracted 
from  men  of  letters.  No  doubt  the  world  owes  it  to  the  memory  of  its 
distinguished  men  to  preserve  an  honest  record  of  its  obligations  to 
them  ;  but  Swedenborg  would  willingly  have  forgiven  it  the  debt  in  his 
own  case.  I  suspect  that  he  would  blush  crimson  if  he  could  once  get 
a  sight  of  Mr.  Tafel's  book,  and  discover  himself  to  have  become  the 
object  of  so  much  cheap  personal  laudation  on  the  part  of  people  who 
apparently  are  quite  indifferent  to  the  only  claim  he  himself  preferred 
to  men's  attention,  that,  namely,  of  a  spiritual  seer.  Whatever  his 
scientific  and  philosophic  worth  may  have  been  to  his  own  eyes,  and 
we  may  be  very  sure  that  it  was  never  very  large,  nothing  can  be 
more  certain  than  that  it  became  utterly  obliterated  there  by  the  chance 
which  subsequently  befell  him  of  an  open  intercourse  with  the  world 
of  spirits.  He  at  once  deserted  his  scientific  pursuits  after  this  event, 
and  never  recurred  to  their  published  memorials  as  offering  the  least 
interest  to  rational  curiosity ;  while  he  affirmed,  on  the  contrary,  that 
the  facts  of  personal  experience  which,  he  was  then  undergoing  possessed 
the  very  highest  philosophic  and  scientific  interest,  as  shedding  a  bril- 
liant light  upon  every  conceivable  problem  of  man's  origin  and  destiny. 
In  looking  somewhat  attentively  through  Mr.  Tafel's  pages,  I  see  no 
evidence  that  any  of  the  writers  he  cites  had  the  least  regard  for  Swe- 
denborg from  Swedenborg's  own  point  of  view ;  while  I  see  abounding 
evidence  of  their  being  disposed  to  yield  him  an  extravagant  personal 
homage,  than  which,  I  am  persuaded,  nothing  could  be  more  offensive 
to  his  own  wishes.  This  petty  partisan  zeal  is  carried  so  far  as  to 
beget  a  very  revolting  note  in  one  place  (page  60),  in  which  two  men 
who  honestly  thought  Swedenborg  insane  are  reported  to  have  sub- 
sequently gone  mad  themselves,  with  such  hilarious  satisfaction,  as 
leaves  no  doubt  on  the  reader's  mind  that  the  reporter  really  supposed 
the  divine  honor  vindicated  by  that  shabby  catastrophe.  If  a  suspicion 
of  Swedenborg's  sanity  were  an  offence  to  the  gods  actually  punishable 
by  loss  of  reason,  I  know  of  no  hospital  large  enough  to  house  the 
victims  which  would  ensue  from  that  judgment  within  the  limits  even 
of  my  own  scant  acquaintance.  Nothing,  indeed,  in  my  opinion,  can  be 
more  logical  and  salutary  for  certain  minds  than  a  suspicion  of  Swe- 
denborg's sanity.  And  certainly  nothing  could  be  more  ludicrously 
inapposite  to  the  needs  of  those  who  appreciate  his  real,  though  inci- 
dental, services  to  science  and  philosophy,  than  a  certificate  to  his  merit 
in  those  respects  would  be  from  the  hand  of  all  the  technical  experts 
on  the  planet. 


214  APPENDIX. 


NOTE  B.     Page  76. 

I  HOPE  no  one  will  attribute  to  me  the  spirit  of  a  textuary  in  culling 
the  following  samples  from  Swedenborg,  or  deem  me  so  frivolous  as  to 
feel  the  least  solicitude  in  regard  to   Swedenborg's  private   opinions 
about  the  church,  or  about  anything  else  in  fact.     Any  one  who  in 
reading   Swedenborg  conceives    that  his   teaching  is   intended  to  be 
authoritative  is  very  inexcusable  for  having  anything  more  to  do  with 
him  on  Swedenborg's  own  principles.    For  he  has  done  his  best  through- 
out his  remarkable  writings  to  rob  even  God  almighty  himself  of  all 
authoritative  prestige,  of  all   despotic  sway,  by  proving  him  instinct 
with  such  a  tenderness  for  human  freedom,  such  a  reverence  for  the 
human  selfhood,  such  a  faultless  consideration  for  man's  spiritual  pros- 
pects and  possibilities,  as  to  permit  every  most  revolting  issue  of  our 
moral  consciousness,  or  quasi  freedom,  rather    than  jeopard  it  for  a 
moment.     Our  spiritual  dignity  and  destiny,  according  to  Swedenborg, 
lie  so  near  the  heart  of  God,  as  to  make  hell  no  less  than  heaven  the 
argument  of  his  amazing  love ;  as  to  make  the  bosom  delight  of  the 
tawniest  devil,  in  fact,  just  as  sacred  to  his  tolerance,  just  as  exempt 
from  outside  or  arbitrary  interference,  as  that  of  the  fairest  angel.    Only 
conceive,  then,  what  a  perverse  —  nay,  what  an  idiotic  —  homage  you 
render  Swedenborg,  if  you  attempt  coercing  him  into  a  relation  of  petty 
control  over  men's  faith  and  practice,  which  only  a  very  evil  person  is 
capable  of  bearing.     Besides,   Swedenborg's  natural  cast  of  mind  is 
utterly  unauthoritative,  utterly  averse,  not  merely  to  command,  but  even 
to  persuade  ;  so  that  if  any  one  will  insist  upon  having  an  infallible 
guide  as  to  the  truths  his  own  great  mind  ought  to  acknowledge,  and 
the  goods  his  own  large  heart  ought  to  cherish,  Swedenborg  is  not  the 
least  in  the  world  the  man  he  is  in  search  of.     Any  vulgar  catholic  or 
mormon  missionary  will  infinitely  better  promote  his  fine  spiritual  ad- 
vantage.    There  is  actually  no  writer  worth  naming,  after  Matthew, 
Mark,  Luke,  and  John,  certainly  no  living  writer,  whose  personality, 
both  moral  and  intellectual,  is  so  little  grandiose  as  Swedenborg's,  i.  e. 
so  little  melodramatic  or  impressive ;  none  who  exerts  so  little  volun- 
tary influence  upon  his  reader.     In  fact  the  total  fashion  of  the  man's 
mind  is  in  this  respect  so  evangelic  or  celestial  —  it  contrasts,  for  ex- 
ample, so  vividly  with  my  own  depraved  intellectual  habit  —  that  if  it 
were  not  for  the  things  he  incessantly  says,  which  are  manifestly  un- 
derived  from  himself,  and  the  clear  prophetic  glimpses  he  perpetually 
gives  us  into  the  very  heart  of  creative  truth  —  truth  that  none  of  our 
poets,  or  visionaries,  or  sages,  or  philanthropists  begins  even  as  yet  to 


APPENDIX.  215 

babble  —  the  perusal  of  his  books  would  be  extremely  difficult  to  me, 
would  be  in  fact  little  short  of  a  downright  penance.  As  it  is,  they 
make  all  other  books  seem  cheap  and  trivial,  turning  them  at  most  into 
a  sort  of  intellectual  "  hock-and-soda-water,"  good  to  fillip  a  jaded  mental 
palate  into  a  momentary  flush  of  exhilaration,  but  not  the  least  fit  to 
organize  a  new  one. 

No,  all  I  propose  to  do  in  this  place  is  to  throw  together  a  few  sen- 
tences from  Swedenborg's  multitudinous  books,  bearing  upon  the  church 
in  man,  which  may  show  to  those  who  are  curious  about  his  writings 
what  a  noble  and  novel  doctrine  they  yield  upon  that  subject,  even  in 
our  liberal  day  and  generation.  He,  good  man,  would  be  unfeignedly 
astonished  and  disgusted  to  learn  that  any  persons  had  been  silly  enough, 
or  insolent  enough,  to  mechanize  a  new  sect  into  inglorious  existence 
out  of  a  pretended  regard  for  his  writings.  But  the  best  counsel  I  can 
offer  my  reader  is  to  give  no  heed  to  my  opinions  about  Swedenborg's 
books,  nor  any  one  else's  opinions,  but  to  consult  them  for  himself.  I 
am  sure  he  will  say  in  the  end  that  no  better  counsel  was  ever  given 
him. 

"  The  church  of  the  Lord  is  both  internal  and  external ;  its  internal 
consisting  of  charity,  and  whatsoever  beliefs  are  congruous  with  charity, 
and  its  external  in  goodness  of  life,  or  the  works  of  charity  and  faith." 
Apocalypse  Explained,  403.  This  of  course  is  the  living  or  invisible 
church.  Thus  he  says  again :  "  The  church's  internal  consists  in 
heartily  willing  what  is  good,  and  its  external  consists  in  doing  what  is 
good."  This  is  the  church,  the  living  or  invisible  church,  known  only 
to  God,  and  all  unknown  to  itself.  But  now  he  immediately  goes  on  to 
characterize  the  sham  or  visible  church :  "  But  the  external  church  "  — 
not  as  before,  "the  church,  internal  and  external" — " consists  in  the 
devout  performance  of  ceremonial  worship.  But  this  ceremony,  which 
simulates  worship,  is  like  a  shell  without  any  kernel,  since  it  is  the  ex- 
ternal surviving  the  internal ;  and  when  the  church  has  come  to  this 
pass,  it  is  at  an  end."  Arcana  Celestia,  6587. 

"  Doctrinal  differences  do  not  distinguish  churches  before  the  lord,^ 
this  distinction  being  effected  by  a  life  in  consonance  with  the  things ', 
of  doctrine,  all  of  which,  when  true,  regard  charity  as  their  base,  for 
what  is  the  end  and  design  of  doctrine  if  not  to  teach  how  man  should 
live  ?     The  several  churches  in  Christendom  are  doctrinally  distinguished 
into  roman  catholics,  lutherans,  and  calvinists.     This  diversity  of  des- 
ignations arises  solely  from  the  things  of  doctrine,  and  would  never 
have  taken  place  if  the  members  of  the  church  had  made  love  to  the 
lord,  and  charity   towards  the  neighbor,  the  leading  point  of  faith. 
Things  of  doctrine  would,  in  that  case,  turn  out  to  be  mere  divergencies 


216  APPENDIX. 

of  opinion  in  regard  to  the  mysteries  of  faith,  which  they  who  are  true 
Christians  would  leave  every  one  to  believe  as  his  particular  conscience 
directed  him,  whilst  it  would  be  the  language  of  their  hearts  that  he  is 
a  true  Christian  who  lives  as  one,  that  is,  as  the  lord  teaches.  Thus 
one  church  would  be  formed  out  of  all  these  divided  churches,  and  all 
disagreements  incident  to  doctrinal  differences  would  vanish ;  yea,  all 
their  reciprocal  animosities  would  be  dissipated,  and  the  kingdom  of  the 
lord  would  be  established  on  the  earth."  A.  C.,  1790. 

"  All  the  members  of  the  early  church  lived  together  as  brethren,  in 
mutual  love.  But  in  process  of  time  love  abated,  and  finally  van- 
ished away ;  and  as  love  vanished  evils  grew,  and  with  evils  falsities, 
out  of  which  came  schisms  and  heresies.  These  would  never  have 
existed,  if  charity  had  continued  to  exist  and  rule;  for  in  that  event 
men  would  not  have  called  schism  and  heresy  by  those  names,  but 
would  have  regarded  them  as  doctrines  conformed  to  each  person's 
particular  way  of  thinking."  A.  C.,  1834. 

"  It  is  false  to  suppose  that  the  man  of  the  church  is  constituted,  not 
by  goodness  or  charity,  but  by  truth  or  faith."  A.  C.,  2351.  "  Faith, 
in  the  word,  means  nothing  but  love  and  charity ;  hence  doctrines  and 
tenets  of  faith  are  not  faith,  but  only  appurtenances  of  it."  2116. 

"  Love  to  the  lord  cannot  possibly  exist  apart  from  neighborly  love. 
For  the  lord's  love  is  love  to  the  whole  human  race,  which  he  desires 
to  save  eternally,  and  to  adjoin  entirely  to  himself,  so  as  for  none  of 
them  to  perish :  wherefore  whosoever  has  love  to  the  lord,  has  the 
lords  love,  and  cannot  help  loving  his  neighbor"  A.  C.,  2023. 

"  When  it  is  said  there  is  no  salvation  in  any  name  but  that  of  the 
lord,  it  means  no  salvation  in  any  other  doctrine,  that  is,  in  no  other 
thing  than  mutual  love,  which  is  the  true  doctrine  of  faith."  A.  C.,  2009. 
"  The  lord  is  never  present  in  external  worship,  unless  internal  wor- 
ship be  contained  in  it."  A.  C.,  1150.  "Many  say,  there  is  no  in- 
ternal worship  without  external.  They  should  say,  no  external  with- 
out internal."  A.  C.,  1175.  "The  new  church  will  be  established 
only  in  those  who  are  in  a  life  of  good."  A.  C.,  3898.  "  The  church 
is  necessarily  various  in  doctrine,  for  one  man  or  one  society  professes 
one  opinion,  another  another.  But  as  long  as  each  lives  in  charity,  he 
is  in  the  church  as  to  life,  whatever  he  be  as  to  doctrine."  A.  C.,  3451. 

"  The  belief  is  very  common,  that  to  be  received  into  heaven  de- 
pends solely  upon  mercy ;  and  that  reception  into  heaven  is  the  same 
thing  as  being  admitted  here  to  a  house  where  a  festivity  is  going  on, 
and  partaking  of  it.  But  let  persons  thus  instructed  know  that  affec- 
tions are  common  in  the  spiritual  world,"  —  just  as  appetite  and  passion 
are  common  to  men  in  this  world,  —  "  man  being  there  a  spirit,  and  his 


APPENDIX.  217 

life  being  affection,  out  of  which,  and  according  to  which,  his  thought 
comes  forth  ;  and  that  homogeneous  affection  conjoins  spirits,  and 
heterogeneous  affection  disjoins  them,  so  that  heterogeneity  makes  a 
devil  wretched  in  heaven,  and  an  angel  miserable  in  hell."  A.  R.,  611. 

"  The  power  to  think  rationally  is  not  man's,  but  God's  in  him  (dei 
apud  ilium)."  D.  L.  &  W.,  23.  "  The  spiritual  world  is  where  man  is, 
and  not  at  all  removed  from  him."  Ditto,  92.  9  • 

"To  walk  in  the  light  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  Rev.  21,  24,  means 
to  perceive  divine  truths  from  interior  light,  and  to  live  a  life  in  accord- 
ance with  those  truths."  A.  R.,  920.  And  "  to  see  truths  from  their 
own  light  is  to  see  them  "-  — not  from  any  doctrinal  teaching,  but  — 
"  from  one's  interior  mind,  which  is  called  the  spiritual  mind,  and  which 
is  vivified  by  charity.  When  the  mind  is  thus  vivified  or  spiritualized, 
light,  and  the  love  of  understanding  truth,  inflow  out  of  heaven  from 
the  lord,  and  this  influx  constitutes  spiritual  illumination.  He  who  is 
thus  illumined,  or  has  this  interior  love  of  truth,  acknowledges  truths  as 
soon  as  he  hears  or  reads  them,"  i.  e.  without  needing  any  argument 
or  persuasion  to  convince  him.  A.  R.,  85. 

"  It  is  not  the  eye  which  sees,  but  the  spirit  by  the  eye.  This  may 
be  concluded  also  from  dreams  in  which  we  sometimes  see  as  in  open 
day.  But  this  is  not  all.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  this  interior  sight, 
or  that  of  the  spirit.  The  spirit  sees  not  from  itself,  but  from  a  sight 
still  more  interior,  which  is  that  of  the  rational  man ;  nay,  even  this 
does  not  see  of  itself,  but  there  is  a  sight  still  more  interior,  that  of  the 
internal  man.  Nor  can  we  stop  here.  For  neither  does  the  internal 
man  see  of  itself,  but  it  is  the  lord,  who,  by  means  of  the  internal 
man,  alone  sees,  because  he  alone  lives,  and  he  gives  to  man  the  faculty 
of  seeing,  and  with  it  the  appearance  as  if  he  saw  himself."  A.  C., 
1954.  "  There  is  no  such  thing  in  creation  as  an  independent,  uncon- 
nected existence,  nor  could  anything  survive  in  that  condition."  A.  C., 
2556.  "  No  person  whatever,  be  he  man,  spirit,  or  angel,  can  will  and 
think  from  himself,  but  from  others,  nor  can  those  others  will  and  think 
from  themselves,  but  these  again  from  others,  and  so  forth :  thus  each 
from  the  first  source  of  life,  who  is  the  lord.  What  is  unconnected 
has  no  existence."  A.  C.,  2886.  "It  is  false  that  life  is  implanted  or 
inherent  in  man;  it  is  always  an  influx."  A.  E.,  82. 

"  There  is  nothing  general  or  universal,  in  itself,  and  apart  from  the 
particular  or  individual  things  which  compose  it,  and  give  it  name  or 
quality.  Hence  it  is  plain  that  there  is  no  universal  providence  of  the 
lord  possible,  save  as  made  up  of  individual  providences,  and  it  is 
stupid  to  insist  upon  such  a  thing."  A.  C.,  4329.  "  Inasmuch  as  life, 
which  is  called  intelligence  and  wisdom,  is  from  the  lord,  it  follows 


21.8  APPENDIX. 

also  that  life  in  common  is  from  him,  for  the  particular  things  of  life 
which  constitute  its  perfection,  and  are  insinuated  into  the  subject  ac- 
cording to  his  faculty  of  reception,  are  all  things  pertaining  to  the  com- 
mon life,  which  life  is  perfected  in  proportion  as  the  evils  into  which 
man  is  born  are  removed  from  it"  A.  E.,  349. 

"  The  eminent  life,  or  excellency  of  life,  of  every  member,  every 
organ,  and  pf  all  the  viscera  of  our  bodies,  consists  in  this,  that  nothing 
is  proper  to  any  of  them,  unless  it  be  common  ;  thus  that  in  each  thing 
there  is  the  idea  of  a  whole  man.  In  man  there  is  no  member,  nor 
any  part  in  a  member,  which  does  not  derive  its  necessaries,  its  nourish- 
ment, its  delights,  from  what  is  common  or  general ;  for  in  the  body, 
what  is  common  or  general  provides  for  particular  things  in  proportion 
to  their  use.  Whatsoever  one  member  or  organ  requires  for  its  work, 
it  borrows  from  its  neighbors,  and  this  again  from  its  neighbors,  thus 
from  the  whole ;  and  it  in  like  manner  communicates  or  makes  common 
to  the  rest  its  own,  according  to  their  want.  The  case  is  similar  in  the 
spiritual  man,  or  heaven.  Every  one  is  there  rewarded  according  to 
the  excellence  of  his  use,  and  at  the  same  according  to  his  love  of  use. 
No  idle  person  is  there  tolerated,  no  slothful  vagabond,  no  indolent 
boaster  of  the  studies  and  labors  of  others,  but  every  one  is  active, 
skilful,  attentive,  and  diligent  in  his  own  office  and  business,  and  places 
honor  and  reward,  not  in  the  first,  but  in  the  second  or  third  place. 
According  to  these  dispositions,  there  is  an  influx  among  them  of  neces- 
sary, of  useful,  and  of  delightful  things."  (I  quote  from  a  charming 
little  tract  incorporated  in  the  Apocalypse  Explained,  and  entitled  The 
;  Divine  Love.) 

"  As  man  becomes  internal,  and  instructed  in  internal  things,  then 
externals  are  as  nothing  to  him  ;  for  he  then  knows  what  is  sacred, 
namely,  charity,  and  belief  built  upon  qharity.  Wherefore,  since  the 
lord's  advent,  man  is  no  longer  estimated  in  reference  to  externals,  but 
to  internals."  A.  C.,  1003.  "  External  worship  is  in  itself  mere 
idolatry."  A.  C.,  1094. 

**  Whoso  acts  from  charity  is  regenerate,  and  makes  no  account  of 
the  things  of  faith  or  truth,  because  he  lives  by  virtue  of  the  good  of 
faith,  and  no  longer  by  its  truth ;  for  truth  has  so  conjoined  itself  to 
good  that  it  no  longer  appears  as  its  form."  A.  C.,  3122.  "  He  who 
has  arrived  at  spiritual  good  has  no  more  need  of  doctrinals,  which  are 
from  others,  for  he  is  in  the  end  whither  he  was  tending,  and  no  longer 
in  the  means.  And  doctrinals  are  only  means  of  arriving  at  good  as 
the  end."  A.  C.,  5997. 

"  The  lord's  spiritual  church  is  dispersed  over  the  whole  globe,  and  is 
everywhere  various  according  to  creeds.  So  in  the  other  world,  no  one 


APPENDIX.  219 

society,  nor  any  one  in  a  society,  exactly  agrees  with  another  in  ideas." 
A.  C.,  3267.  "The  spiritual  church  extends  over  the  whole  globe,  as 
much  among  those  who  are  without  as  among  those  who  are  with  truths 
of  faith."  A.  C.,  3263.  "  As  internal  truths  become  seen,  the  external 
truths  which  shrouded  them  become  dissipated,  and  serve  only  as  means 
of  thinking  about  internal  ones."  A.  C.,  3857. 

"  Truth  of  itself  cannot  see  whether  it  be  truth,  but  must  be  en- 
lightened by  good."  A.  C.,  4256. 

"  A  holy  internal  life  and  a  holy  external  one,"  such  as  ritualists 
cherish,  "are  altogether  incompatible."  A.  C.,  4293. 

"  To  know  is  not  to  believe.  To  believe  is  an  internal  thing,  possible/ 
only  to  those  who  are  in  the  love  of  the  good  and  the  true,  that  is,  inj 
charity  towards  others."  A.  C.,  4319. 

"  The  man  who  is  regenerating  or  becoming  spiritual  is  first  led  by  '• 
truth  to  good,  because  he  does  not  know  what  spiritual  good  is  but  by 
truth,  or  doctrine  drawn  from  scripture ;  thus  he  is  initiated  into  good. 
But  when  he  is  initiated,  he  is  no  longer  led  by  truth  to  good,  but  by  I 
good  to  truth,  for  he  then,  from  the  good  that  is  in  his  heart,  not  only 
sees  the  truths  he  had  before  known,  but  also  from  this  good  produces 
new  truths,  which  he  had  not  before  known,  nor  could  know.  For  good 
has  along  with  it  the  property  of  desiring  truths,  being  as  it  were 
nourished  by  them,  inasmuch  as  it  is  perfected  by  them.  These  new 
truths  greatly  differ  from  those  he  had  before  known,  these  latter 
having  had  little  of  life,  while  the  former  are  enlivened  by  good." 
A.  C.,  5804. 

"  Before  regeneration  man  acts  from  obedience,  after  from  affection ;  ( 
these  two  states  are  inversely  related  to  each  other,  for  in  the  former  | 
state  truth  rules,  in  the  latter  good.  When  man  is  in  the  latter  state,  or 
acts  from  affection,  it  is  no  longer  allowed  him  to  do  good  from  obedience 
merely,  or  from  truth."  A.  C.,  8505.  "  When  man  is  led  of  the 
lord  by  good,  and  not  from  truth,  he  is  then  in  charity,  i.  e.  in  the  love 
of  doing  that  good ;  all  in  heaven  are  thus  led,  since  this  is  to  be  in 
divine  order,  and  thus  all  things  which  they  think  and  do  are  thought 
and  done  spontaneously  or  from  freedom.  If  they  should  think  and  act 
otherwise,  that  is,  from  truth,  they  would  think  whether  a  thing  ought 
to  be  so  done  or  not,  and  would  thus  hesitate  in  everything,  and  thereby 
50  obscure  the  light  pertaining  to  them,  as  to  relapse  into  an  unregen- 
erate  condition."  A.  C.,  8516. 

"  When  man  is  regenerate  he  no  longer  asks  from  truth  "  (or  his 
understanding)  "  what  he  is  to  believe  and  do,  but  from  good  "  (or  his 
heart),  "because  he  is  imbued  with  truths  and  has  them  in  himself,  nor 
has  he  any  concern  about  truths  from  any  other  source  than  his  own 
good."  A.  C.,  8772. 


220  APPENDIX. 

"The  divine  flowing  in  former  times  through  heaven,  was  divine 
truth,  represented  by  the  law  of  Moses;  what  is  now  transfluent  there 
is  good:9  A.  C.,  6720. 

"  The  good  appertaining  to  man  makes  his  heaven,  so  that  every 
man's  heaven  is  exactly  what  his  good  is."  A.  C.,  9741. 

"  Intelligence  is  to  perceive  inwardly  in  one's  own  mind  whether  a 
thing  be  true  or  not.  To  perceive  from  teaching  is  not  to  be  intelligent, 
but  only  to  know."  A.  E.,  198. 

"  The  ancients  did  not  say  faith  but  truth,  whereas  the  moderns  say 
faith  instead  of  truth.  The  reason  is  that  the  former  believed  only 
what  they  saw  to  be  true,  or  apprehended  understandingly,  and  the 
moderns  profess  to  believe,  though  they  do  not  see  nor  understand. 
The  angels  in  the  superior  heavens  are  not  willing  even  to  mention 
faith,  for  they  see  truth  from  the  light  of  good,  and  call  it  madness  to 
confide  in  any  one  saying  that  this  or  that  ought  to  be  believed  without 
being  apprehended  in  the  understanding.  The  reason  why  truth  ought 
to  be  named  in  the  place  of  faith  is,  because  by  truths  come  all  intel- 
ligence and  wisdom,  but  by  faith,  especially  by  faith  separated  from 
these  things,  comes  all  our  spiritual  ignorance.  This  is  why  the  higher 
angels  turn  themselves  away  when  faith  is  named,  having  no  sympathy 
with  the  thought  of  those  who  name  it,  which  is  that  the  understanding 
iis  to  be  held  captive  to  the  obedience  of  faith."  A.  E.,  895. 


NOTE  C.     Page  92. 

THE  modern  sentimental  religionist  will  be  shocked  at  my  thus  reviv- 
ing the  faded  lineaments  of  his  mistress  as  she  appeared  in  the  dew  of 
her  youth  and  unconsciousness,  when  her  service  brought  sorrow  and 
desolation  of  spirit  to  every  hearth  that  harbored  her.  But  I  have  no 
disposition  to  apologize.  I  am  not  so  presumptuous,  indeed,  as  to  quar- 
rel with  the  peculiar  evolution  of  the  religious  sentiment  which  is  so 
rife  at  this  day  ;  for  no  doubt  it  is  strictly  appropriate  to  the  existing 
needs  of  the  human  heart.  I  only  quarrel  with  the  pretension  its 
votaries  attribute  to  it,  of  being  a  comparatively  pure  exhibition  of  the 
sentiment,  and  protest  against  its  being  regarded  as  an  absolute  adrance 
upon  the  earlier  forms  of  religion.  It  is  no  doubt  a  providential  modi- 
fication of  the  old  religious  conscience,  to  suit  the  demands  of  our 
comparatively  superficial  and  frivolous  spiritual  life.  But  it  is  absurd, 
as  it  seems  to  me,  to  talk  of  it  as  an  absolute  improvement.  Indeed, 
to  every  one  studiously  familiar  with  the  early  religious  life  of  man,  the 


APPENDIX.  221 

change  in  question  is  not  from  good  to  better,  but  only  from  bad  to 
worse.  Religion  has  undergone  so  sheer  a  demoralization  since  her 
pure  and  holy  prime  —  has  sunk  into  such  a  brazen  handmaid  to 
worldliness,  such  a  painted  and  bedizened  courtesan  and  street-walker, 
proffering  her  unstinted  favors  to  every  sentimental  fop,  or  clerical  beau 
diseur,  who  has  the  smallest  change  of  self-conceit  in  his  pocket  where~ 
with  to  pay  for  them  —  that  one  finds  himself  secretly  invoking  the 
advent  of  some  grand  social  renovation  in  order  to  blot  it  as  a  profes- 
sion out  of  remembrance,  and  leave  it  extant  only  as  a  spiritual  life. 
Religion  was  once  a  spiritual  life  in  the  earth,  though  a  very  rude  and 
terrible  one  ;  and  her  conquests  were  diligently  authenticated  by  the 
divine  spirit.  Then  she  meant  terror  and  amazement  to  all  devout 
self-complacency  in  man ;  then  she  meant  rebuke  and  denial  to  every 
form  of  distinctively  personal  hope  and  pretension  towards  God ;  then  she 
meant  discredit  and  death  to  every  breath  of  a  pharisaic  or  quaker 
temper  in  humanity,  by  which  a  man  could  be  led  to  boast  of  a  "private 
spirit "  in  his  bosom,  giving  him  a  differential  character  and  aspect  in 
God's  sight  to  that  of  other  men,  especially  the  great  and  holy  and  un- 
conscious mass  of  his  kind.  Swedenborg  found  hell  made  up  of  this 
oppressive  sort  of  persons,  men  who  claim  to  be  righteous  in  themselves, 
and  despise  the  divine  or  universal  righteousness,  which  belongs  to  them 
only  as  they  are  in  solidarity  with  their  kind,  only  in  other  words  as 
the  sentiment  of  7cmc?-ness,  or  charity,  in  their  bosoms,  sops  up  that 
of  self.  This  is  why  the  New  Testament  addresses  no  inviting  or 
soothing  word  of  any  sort  to  the  saint,  but  only  to  the  sinner.  In  one 
of  those  very  rare  gospel  incidents  which  give  us  a  glimpse  into  Christ's 
personal  temperament,  a  saintly  youth  presents  himself  so  aglow  with 
all  moral  excellence,  that  Christ  cannot  help  testifying  a  natural  im- 
pulse of  affection  towards  him ;  but  he  nevertheless  straightway  charges 
him  to  set  no  value  upon  his  virtue  as  a  celestial  qualification.  "  If 
thou  wilt  be  perfect,  go  and  sett  all  that  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor  ; 
and  come  and  follow  me."  No  wonder  we  are  told  that  when  "  the 
young  man  heard  that  saying,  he  went  away  sorrowful ;  for  he  had 
great  possessions."  For  nothing  could  well  be  more  preposterous  than 
the  recommendation  of  Christ,  if  we  are  to  take  his  words  strictly 
according  to  the  letter,  or  regard  them  as  devoid  of  an  internal  or 
spiritual  and  universal  sense.  Clearly  no  man  was  ever  divinely 
authorized  to  make  his  private  will  the  rule  of  my  action,  unless  he 
were  at  the  same  time  divinely  qualified  to  prove  his  will  identical  with 
that  of  all  mankind,  or  exalt  it  into  a  standard  of  universal  justice. 
No,  the  letter  of  truth  kills,  the  spirit  alone  gives  life.  Thus  the  "  rich 
man  "  of  the  gospel,  who  finds  it  so  hard  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 


222  APPENDIX. 

is  only  figuratively  the  moneyed  man,  while  in  truth  it  is  the  "  virtuous  " 
man,  or  the  man  who  in  all  moral  regards  is  so  favorably  distinguished 
from  other  men  as  to  feel  himself  meritoriously  related  by  that  fact  to 
God  also.  The  "  possessions  "  of  such  a  man  are  a  hindrance  rather 
than  a  help  to  his  spiritual  progress,  because  they  induce  a  belief  that 
the  divine  righteousness  is  of  a  base  moral  or  personal  type,  and  not 
of  an  exclusively  spiritual  or  impersonal  quality. 

One  word  more.  Consider  the  lilies,  said  he  who  spake  as  no  man 
before  or  since  has  ever  spoken,  consider  the  lilies,  how  they  grow  ;  they 
toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin,  and  yet  I  say  unto  you,  that  Solomon  in  all 
his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these.  Manifestly,  if  the  subjec- 
tive or  sensitive  life  of  the  lily  —  the  life  which  allies  it  to  the  earth 
as  the  sole  heaven  of  its  nurture  and  growth  —  were  the  same  thing 
with  its  objective  or  unconscious  perfection,  that  is,  with  the  beauty  and 
fragrance  which  alone  individualize  it  to  our  intelligence,  the  lesson 
here  conveyed  could  have  no  applicability  to  us,  would  in  fact  forfeit  its 
total  significance  to  our  understanding.  For  the  whole  point  of  the 
lesson  is,  to  dissuade  us,  by  the  example  of  the  lily,  from  those  subjec- 
tive cares  and  anxieties  to  which  we  are  naturally  prone,  in  the  con- 
fidence that  all  our  real  or  objective  needs  will  be  infallibly  supplied 
by  the  supreme  care-taker.  And  if,  therefore,  the  lily  could  be  sup- 
posed to  be  subjectively  conscious  of  its  objective  charms,  or  properly 
solicitous  about  the  impression  it  produces  upon  higher  natures,  the 
lesson  would  read  exactly  backwards,  and  leave  us  less  void  of  unwise 
anxiety  than  it  found  us.  Clearly  the  lily  offers  no  fit  counsel  to  us, 
save  in  so  far  as  negatively  or  by  contrast  it  mirrors  our  inward  worth- 
lessness.  It  is  our  spiritual  habit  to  be  forever  seeking  the  argument 
of  God's  good-will  to  us,  not  in  the  infinitude  of  his  love  which  rejects 
all  worth  in  its  objects,  but  in  our  own  subjective  states  by  which  we 
are  reasonably  qualified  for  his  favor.  And  this  vicious  habit  the  lily, 
by  its  subjective  modesty  or  serene  acquiescence  in  its  native  nothing- 
ness, eloquently  rebukes.  It  is  the  exact  Christian  ideal  of  life,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  we  should,  even  while  undergoing  an  experience  of  our 
subjective  infirmity  or  unworthiness,  amounting  to  despair  in  ourselves, 
yet  feel  so  assured  a  peace  in  God,  and  the  constancy  of  his  redeeming 
love  and  providence,  as  virtually  transforms  that  despair  into  hope. 
And  the  lily  by  its  formal  or  objective  beauty,  its  exquisite  unasking 
and  unconscious  grace  and  innocence,  exactly  reflects  or  foreshadows 
these  priceless  spiritual  possibilities  in  us,  and  so  preaches  us,  if  only 
our  ear  is  inwardly  exercised  to  hear,  a  sermon  far  more  evangelic 
than  ever  fell  from  the  lips  of  learned  Paul  or  politic  Peter. 

Christ's  originality  —  when  he  interpreted  the  divine  law  as  mean- 


APPENDIX.  223 

ing  in  spirit  love  to  God  and  love  to  man,  or  as  being  fulfilled  in  our 
doing  to  our  neighbor  as  we  would  be  done  by  —  has  been  of  late  zeal- 
ously controverted  ;  some  persons  maintaining  that  his  doctrine  on  this 
subject  had  been  substantially,  if  not  formally,  anticipated  by  pagan 
sages,  while  others  contend  that  he  was  without  any  rival.  How  the 
controversy  actually  stands  I  do  not  know.  As  a  good  deal  of  will 
energizes  it  on  both  sides,  it  is  probable  neither  party  to  it  is  much 
affected  by  the  arguments  of  the  other.  It  seems  to  me,  however,  that 
if  I  were  disposed  to  maintain  Christ's  absolute  originality  as  a  teacher, 
I  should  be  able  to  find  a  much  more  inexpugnable  ground  for  the 
claim,  in  the  doctrine  he  laid  down  as  to  the  temper  of  mind  which 
qualified  men  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  when  he  likened  it  to  that  of 
unconscious  infancy.  "  Suffer  little  children,"  he  said  to  his  disciples, 
"  suffer  little  children  to  come  unto  me  and  forbid  them  not :  for  of  such 
is  the  kingdom  of  heaven"  That  clearly  was  the  first  time  in  human 
annals  that  the  soul  of  man  found  itself  so  level  with  the  divine  mind 
—  attained  to  so  clear  an  insight  into  the  divine  perfection  —  as 
livingly  to  perceive  that  poverty  not  wealth,  innocence  not  virtue, 
ignorance  not  wisdom,  was  what  alone  truly  qualified  men  for  the 
divine  sympathy.  At  that  period  the  stoics  were  the  leaders  of  spec- 
ulative thought.  To  fall  back  on  all  occasions  upon  one's  moral  force, 
and  find  a  refuge  against  calamity  in  one's  native  strength  of  will,  was 
the  best  recognized  wisdom  of  man.  Strength  not  weakness,  knowledge 
not  ignorance,  virtue  not  innocence,  was  the  shining  panoply  wherewith 
the  stoic  faith  armed  its  votary  against  the  slings  and  arrows  of  out- 
rageous fortune.  Christ  probably  had  never  heard  of  the  stoics,  but 
if  he  had  he  could  only  have  been  revolted  by  their  doctrine,  since  his 
own  was  the  exact  and  total  inversion  of  theirs.  The  ideal  of  the  stoic 
was  rich  and  cultivated  manhood.  The  ideal  of  Christ  was  innocent 
unconscious  childhood.  According  to  Christ,  what  men  need  in  order 
to  the  full  enjoyment  of  the  divine  favor  is,  to  be  emptied  of  all 
personal  pretension,  to  become  indifferent  to  all  self-seeking  or  self- 
providence,  and  to  present  to  the  divine  hand  the  same  unaffected 
submission  which  the  child  exhibits  to  the  parent.  Thus  weakness 
not  strength,  ignorance  not  knowledge,  impotence  not  faculty,  affec- 
tion not  intellect,  innocence  not  virtue,  heart  not  head,  want  not 
wealth,  was  what,  in  his  estimation,  qualifies  men  for  the  skies.  And 
his  conviction  on  the  subject,  for  which  also  he  laid  down  his  life,  was 
so  strictly  original,  that  is,  it  was  so  little  shared  by  other  men,  as  to 
have  awakened  almost  no  echo  up  to  this  day  in  the  bosom  of  the  race, 
and  to  have  found  itself  ratified,  at  most,  only  by  some  rare  individual 
experiences  here  and  there  throughout  history. 


224  APPENDIX. 


NOTE  D.     Page  99. 

SURELY  I  adore  and  bless  God  with  all  my  heart  that  he  has  suc- 
ceeded in  putting  the  scampish  or  diabolic  element  in  our  nature 
upon  the  side  of  public  order ;  that  he  has  so  secularized  religion,  and 
so  popularized  government,  that  whatsoever  is  basest  in  our  common 
life  tends  irresistibly  to  the  highest  places,  rises  spontaneously  to  the 
surface  like  scum  or  froth,  and  passes  off  harmlessly,  nay  benignantly, 
in  offices  of  public  dignity  and  use.  At  least  it  will  be  made  so  to  pass 
off  as  soon  as  our  owlish  vision  becomes  enlarged  to  the  celestial  day- 
light which  is  visiting  us  from  on  high,  and  our  clownish  hearts  grow 
devout  enough  to  acknowledge  that  evil  is  a  far  more  vivacious  ser- 
vitor of  God,  because  an  interested  one,  than  good  has  ever  been.  The 
good  man  indeed,  if  his  spiritual  intelligence  has  also  been  quickened, 
altogether  disowns  the  divine  service,  in  any  strict  sense  of  that  word. 
His  hearty  reverence  for  God  disposes  him  to  a  wholly  filial  recog- 
nition of  him,  and  makes  him  loathe  nothing  so  much  as  the  magisterial 
conception  of  the  divine  name.  I  suppose  the  profoundest  anguish  a 
really  believing  mind  suffers  grows  out  of  the  inveterate  servility  it 
feels  to  be  imposed  upon  it  by  the  prevalent  thought  of  God  in  the 
church  and  the  world.  I  cannot  imagine,  indeed,  that  the  peace  of  any 
such  mind  will  ever  be  perfect,  until  the  divine  existence  itself  ceases 
to  be  a  tradition  of  the  dead  memory,  by  becoming  reproduced  in  the 
actual  life  of  its  senses. 

But  all  this  does  not  hinder  me  seeing,  on  the  contrary  it  insures 
my  seeing,  how  illusory  all  our  private  pretension  to  virtue  is,  and 
how  preposterous  our  hope  of  arriving  at  true  manhood  individually, 
except  upon  a  basis  of  the  amplest  preliminary  justice  to  all  men.  Give 
all  mankind  relief  from  abject  physical  and  moral  want,  by  insuring 
them  subsistence  and  education,  and  you  give  them  ipso  facto  social 
recognition ;  and  when  society  is  at  last  established  among  men,  then 
for  the  first  time  a  true,  because  a  really  free  or  spiritual,  individuality 
will  be  possible.  When  divine  justice  or  righteousness  is  universally 
done  upon  the  earth,  or  what  is  the  same  thing,  when  every  man's 
natural  fellowship  or  equality  with  all  other  men  becomes  practically 
organized,  then  those  of  us  who  choose  may  reasonably  aspire  to  unin- 
cumbered  spiritual  possessions ;  but  as  long  as  every  man's  soul  is 
mortgaged  as  now  to  his  suffering  brethren,  it  is  hopeless  and  indeed 
iniquitous  to  expect  any  true  spiritual  freedom. 


APPENDIX.  225 


NOTE  E.     Page  120. 

I  SEE  no  reason  why  the  man  of  science  should  not  run  us  phys- 
ically—  run  all  he  can  find  of  physical  substance  in  us  —  into  the 
most  abject  mineral  maternity.  And  it  seems  a  pity  that  less  logical 
men  of  science  should  waste  their  energy  in  vain  efforts  to  stop  him  off, 
under  the  impression  that  he  is  doing  harm  to  men's  spiritual  interests. 
For  after  all  this  is  got  through  with,  after  we  have  been  scientifically 
disposed  of  and  done  for  to  all  the  extent  of  our  animal,  vegetable,  and 
mineral  properties,  absolutely  nothing  at  all  has  been  done  to  account 
for  our  distinctive  natural  existence  or  phenomenality.  And  this  be- 
cause human  nature,  unlike  mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  nature,  is 
not  physical,  but  moral  or  metaphysical.  That  is  to  say,  its  specific  or 
free  element  is  one  with  its  generic  element,  and  not  servile  to  it,  as  is 
the  case  with  those  lower  natures.  No  doubt  I  have  all  manner  of 
physical  properties,  but  none  of  these  things  is  what  makes  me  man,  or 
constitutes  me  a  subject  of  human  nature.  If  I  were  to  embody  in  my 
own  person  every  perfection  of  the  lower  natural  forms,  I  should  not  be 
so  much  more,  but  only  so  much  less,  a  man.  You  would  be  obliged 
to  eliminate  all  these  adventitious  quantities,  before  you  would  get  at 
me,  at  my  true  human  quality,  which  does  not  fall  within  the  realm 
of  science  or  reflex  observation,  but  exclusively  within  that  of  conscience 
or  living  experience. 

Understand  me.  My  morality,  or  personal  quality,  the  sentiment  I 
have  of  a  selfhood  or  freedom  over  and  above  my  appetites  and  pas- 
sions, is  what  I  possess  most  strictly  in  common  with  all  men,  and  is 
what  alone  makes  me  man,  makes  me  a  partaker  of  human  nature.  At 
first,  no  doubt,  and  for  a  good  while,  I  am  apt  practically  to  identify 
myself  with  my  appetites  and  passions,  and  if  it  were  not  for  the  control 
exerted  at  this  period  over  my  action  by  the  public  conscience,  my 
manhood  would  be  swallowed  up  of  sheer  animality.  But  my  parents 
and  guardians,  or  the  other  organized  educative  force  of  the  community, 
stand  between  me  and  this  disastrous  issue,  by  substituting  their  man- 
hood for  mine,  until  such  time  as  I  myself  may  attain  to  moral  con- 
sciousness. They  lend  me  their  cultivated  moral  force  (while  mine  is 
still  dormant)  as  so  much  capital  whereupon  to  work  out  my  future 
independence,  by  making  their  will  instead  of  my  own  appear  to  my 
imagination  the  proper  law  of  my  action.  They  educate  my  manhood, 
or  moral  consciousness,  by  leading  me  to  stigmatize  myself  as  an  evil 
person,  and  submit  to  disgrace,  whenever  I  abandon  myself  to  my 
animal  propensions  unreservedly ;  and  to  recognize  myself  as  a  good 
15 


226  APPENDIX. 

person,  entitled  to  honor,  whenever  I  restrain  them  within  certain  con- 
ventional bounds.  But  they  only  educate  my  manhood ;  they  by  no  means 
confer  or  create  it.  Manhood  or  moral  force  is  latent  in  my  animal 
nature,  just  as  the  statue  is  latent  in  the  marble ;  and  what  conscience 
(which  in  its  cruder  forms  is  religion,  or  the  law)  does  for  me  is 
to  make  it  patent,  or  bring  it  to  consciousness  in  me,  by  eliminating  to 
my  experience  all  that  is  purely  animal  from  it ;  just  as  the  sculptor 
brings  forth  the  statue  by  carefully  eliminating  from  it  whatsoever  in 
the  marble  is  pure  material,  and  will  not  lend  itself  to  ideal  form.  The 
sculptor  does  not  create  the  statue ;  he  only  educates  it,  or  leads  it 
forth,  out  of  the  obdurate  marble  into  visible  form ;  and  he  does  this 
by  resolutely  rejecting  or  wasting  whatsoever  in  the  substance  re- 
fuses to  become  form.  So  the  divine  artist,  in  bringing  us  to  moral 
consciousness,  bestows  no  objective  or  real  being  upon  us,  but  only  sub- 
jective form,  or  the  appearance  of  being;  and  he  does  this  only  by 
resolutely  using  up  and  casting  out  whatsoever  in  our  animal  substance 
insists  upon  remaining  animal,  or  refuses  to  take  on  moral  form.  If 
there  were  not  a  moral  force  or  force  of  manhood  within  all  mineral, 
vegetable,  and  animal  existence,  ready  to  be  divinely  educated  or  brought 
forth  in  conscious  form,  all  the  administrative  wisdom  of  church  and 
state  would  be  thrown  away  upon  me,  as  upon  the  tiger  or  the  sheep. 
Who  thinks  of  educating  the  tiger  or  the  sheep  ?  And  why  not  ? 
Simply  because  they  are  naturally  not  men  ;  i.  e.  because  their  nature 
is  simple  not  composite,  physical  not  moral,  and  hence  deprives  them 
of  conscience,  or  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  The  tiger  or  the 
sheep  is  not,  like  man,  "  created  male  and  female " ;  that  is  to  say, 
they  have  science  but  not  conscience,  being  "  created  each  after  its 
kind,"  and  having  no  power  like  man  to  rise  above  or  fall  below  that 
kind.  But  man  is  created  male  and  female ;  that  is,  both  physical  and 
moral,  common  and  proper,  public  and  private,  bond  and  free.  Thus 
he  alone  has  conscience,  or  the  knowledge  of  himself  as  by  nature 
both  chaotic  and  cosmical,  both  civic  and  domestic,  both  universal  and 
particular,  both  generic  and  specific,  both  good  and  evil,  both  sheep 
and  tiger,  or  the  harmony  of  all  nature's  contrasts,  and  hence  the  anal- 
ogon  of  all  God's  perfection. 

And  if  all  this  is  true  —  if  it  be  true  that  my  morality  is  exclusively 
a  natural  mark  in  me,  and  does  not  give  me  my  spiritual  individuality  or 
difference  from  my  brother  man,  but  only  a  more  perfect  identity  with 
him,  in  giving  me  at  the  same  time  an  inextinguishable  diversity  from 
all  that  is  not  him  —  then  doubtless  it  interests,  but  it  does  not  alarm 
me,  to  hear  that  Messrs.  Vogt  and  Moleschott  and  Biichner  and 
Huxley,  and  all  the  other  enfans  terribles  of  science  who  furnish  our 


APPENDIX.  227 

newspaper  palate  with  so  much  pungent  provocation  nowadays,  have 
serious  thoughts  of  revolutionizing  our  faith,  and  making  us  believe 
downwards  henceforth  instead  of  upwards.  Is  any  one  really  in  dread 
of  science  ?  Science  has  but  one  legitimate  function,  which  is  obediently 
to  reflect  what  exists,  by  no  means  to  conduct  or  govern  it.  Can  any  one 
imagine  a  world  more  utterly  farcical  than  one  administered  on  scien- 
tific principles ;  i.  e.  on  principles  approved  by  Messrs.  Huxley,  Vogt,  and 
the  rest  ?  And  can  anybody  suppose  that  God  almighty  has  at  last 
grown  ashamed  of  having  so  long  misconducted  his  own  business,  and 
is  going  to  transfer  it  to  the  savans?  To  the  guidance  of  human 
science  ?  What  sort  of  a  figure  would  my  reader  come  shortly  to 
cut,  if,  instead  of  actively  attending  to  his  affairs,  he  should  content 
himself  with  standing  all  day  before  his  mirror,  and  sinking  his  real 
personality  in  his  reflected  one  ?  Well,  the  world  would  instantly  grow 
just  as  idiotic,  if  it  could  once  disown  its  living  inspiration  and  put  up 
with  a  scientific  one.  For  science  knows  and  can  know  nothing  of  what 
life  is  in  itself,  but  only  in  its  effects.  It  knows  and  can  know  absolutely 
nothing  of  what  life  is  inwardly  or  consciously,  but  only  of  the  outward 
masks  or  appearances  under  which  it  is  unconsciously  revealed ;  just  as 
your  mirror  knows  nothing  and  can  tell  nothing  of  your  morale,  or  living 
personality,  but  only  of  your  physique,  or  dead  one.  Life  is  shut  up  to  the 
reaJra  of  consciousness,  the  moral  or  metaphysical  realm,  in  which  infinite 
and  finite,  God  and  man,  are  still  inorganically  blent  or  chaotically  con- 
founded. But  science  has  to  do  at  most  only  with  the  physical  realm, 
the  realm  of  body  or  substance,  where  finite  is  seen  divorcing  itself 
from  infinite,  and  life  is  held  hopelessly  captive  to  mere  existence, 
which  is  death. 

Accordingly  when  the  man  of  science  puts  his  stout  tongue  in  his 
cheek  to  deride  my  old-time  beliefs  about  man's  strictly  supernatural  — 
i.  e.  divine  or  spiritual  —  origin  and  destiny,  he  only  succeeds,  not  in 
dashing  my  lawful  jocundity  even  for  a  moment,  but  in  stimulating  me 
to  make  a  more  modest  use  of  my  own  tongue,  by  wagging  it  freely 
to  the  following  effect :  — 

"  Undoubtedly,  excellent  observer,  the  realm  of  physics  in  its 
entirety  belongs  to  us,  how  little  soever  we  belong  to  it.  It  is  indis- 
solubly  bound  up  in  our  morale,  just  as  the  marble  is  bound  up  in  the 
statue,  or  the  organ  in  its  function ;  and  there  is  consequently  no  stone 
so  indolent  or  callous,  no  fungus  so  malignant,  no  ape  so  unclean,  as 
not  to  furnish  an  apt  type  of  our  Regenerate  natural  possibilities.  But 
only  a  type.  For  the  physical  realm  no  way  Evolves  the  moral,  but 
only  evolves  it,  or  excludes  ;t  from  itself;  just  as  the  marble  evolves 
the  statue  or  excludes  it  from  itself,  the  organ  the  function,  the  mother 


228  APPENDIX. 

the  child.  And  the  very  oldest  of  those  old  faiths  which  you  now  in- 
nocently because  ignorantly  despise,  was  yet  beforehand  with  you  in 
signalizing  this  natural  sovereignty  or  comprehensiveness  of  man  with 
respect  to  all  lower  natures,  inasmuch  as  it  was  accustomed  to  assign  to 
moral  existence  or  human  nature  infernal  no  less  than  celestial  ca- 
pacities ;  that  is,  a  power  of  exceeding  the  brute  himself  in  brutality, 
simply  by  sinking  man  in  animal,  or  wedding  sagacious  personality  to 
blind  instinct. 

"  But  observe  that  all  this  is  degeneracy  in  man,  or  man  fatting  short 
of  his  nature ;  and  you,  as  a  man  of  scientific  probity,  are  bound,  if  you 
signalize  the  fact  at  all,  to  signalize  it  in  that  striking  light.  Naturally 
man  is  not  a  polliwog  nor  a  baboon  ;  because  the  moment  he  touches 
these  latitudes,  we  perceive  that  he  does  so  only  by  deserting  or  fall- 
ing below  his  own  natural  level.  What  I  insist,  therefore,  upon  your 
doing  is  either  to  account,  upon  scientific  principles,  for  this  natural 
level  in  man  being  pitched  so  much  higher  than  that  of  all  other  exist- 
ence, as  to  make  it  obvious  degeneracy  in  him  to  remind  you  of  polli- 
wog or  baboon,  or  else,  incontinently  to  take  your  lubberly  tongue  out 
of  your  cheek,  and  so  restore  your  countenance  to  its  wonted  amiable 
proportions." 

The  short  of  the  matter  is,  why  does  man  require  to  degenerate  into 
catamount  or  peacock,  unless  his  nature  be  not  theirs  ?  And  if  his 
nature  be  literally  not  theirs,  what  philosophic  use  does  it  serve  to 
show,  by  a  laborious  parade  of  their  organized  structural  and  physio- 
logical affinities,  that  theirs  nevertheless  is  his  ?  This,  no  doubt,  is 
praiseworthy  science.  But  science  is  not  philosophy  any  more  than  it  is 
religion.  If  science  could  only  prove  to  us  either  that  ape  can  become 
man  by  simple  education,  i.  e.  without  natural  regeneration,  or  rising 
above  his  own  nature,  or  that  man  can  become  ape  without  natural 
</egene ration,  i.  e.  without  falling  below  his  own  nature  and  becoming 
diabolic,  then  science  would  put  forth  a  just  philosophic  pretension, 
and  might  shed  some  light  upon  the  obscurities  of  our  origin  and 
destiny.  But  so  long  as  it  is  obliged  plumply  to  deny  both  of  these 
possibilities,  of  what  conceivable  philosophic  significance  are  all  the 
pedantic  ostentatious  disputes  with  which  it  contrives  to  give  temporary 
eclat  to  certain  rival  ambitions  ? 


APPENDIX.  229 


NOTE  F.    Page  149. 

THIS  Adam  and  Eve  legend  is  only  a  gracious  allegory,  invented  to 
set  forth,  in  exquisite  symbols,  the  invincible  blindness  in  spiritual  things 
which  besets  our  natural  intelligence.  As  a  rule  mankind  never  suspects 
that  "  great  men,"  as  they  are  called,  are  the  outcome  of  its  own  womb 
exclusively,  abject  harbingers  of  its  own  infinite  though  still  unrecog- 
nized wealth  of  being,  but  always  ascribes  to  them  an  independent  or 
outside  and  exceptional  divine  significance.  It  devoutly  styles  them 
"  providential "  men,  i.  e.  men  divinely  contrived  to  meet  a  certain 
exigency  in  human  affairs,  and  hence  is  sure  to  deem  them  much  above, 
certainly  never  below,  the  average  of  human  nature.  Sense  never  so 
much  as  dreams  that  selfhood,  personality,  character,  is  but  the  badge 
of  our  common  humanity ;  and  indeed  it  would  be  utterly  disconcerted 
if  taught  to  regard  its  more  vivid  manifestations  as  only  so  many 
foretokenings  of  the  race's  future  possibilities.  On  the  contrary,  it 
always  concedes  a  certain  absoluteness  or  infinitude  to  great  character, 
a  certain  prestige  of  preter-  if  not  super-naturalness,  which  more 
than  anything  else  retards  its  own  elevation  and  condemns  it  to  grovel. 
In  short,  the  moral  pretension  in  humanity  —  that  natural  sense  of 
egotism,  or  un-kind-ness,  which  makes  every  man  deem  himself  to  be 
something  in  himself,  and  apart  from  his  kind  or  nature  —  habitually 
arrogates  to  itself  a  direct  or  special  divine  sanction,  habitually  prefers 
specific  or  class  interests  to  generic  or  universal  ones,  habitually  disci- 
plines its  subject  to  urge  his  private  claim  to  the  divine  consideration,  in 
utter  indifference,  if  needs  be,  to  the  ineffable  woes  and  wants  of  the  race. 

Carlyle  is  the  boisterous  elegist  or  apologist  of  this  —  once  crazy 
and  conceited,  but  now  simply  effete  —  faith;  its  self-elected  Old 
Mortality,  who  ever  and  anon  sets  himself  to  furbishing  up  its  martyr- 
ology  with  such  a  cheerful  and  profligate  contempt  for  the  facts  of 
history,  that  the  world  would  simply  stand  aghast,  and  refuse  to  applaud 
the  preposterous  performance,  did  it  not  always  discern  the  inveterate 
and  unconscious  comedian  in  the  frowning  mask  of  the  moralist.  Better 
than  any  of  our  amateur  Jeremiahs,  Carlyle  succeeds  in  reproducing 
the  flashy  but  cheap  and  fallacious  conception  of  man  which  underlies 
our  old  civilization,  and  is  fast  hastening  its  extinction.  He  has  become 
at  last  almost  the  only  mouthpiece  of  that  stubborn  and  vulgar  pagan- 
ism of  the  heart,  which  identifies  God  with  the  vir  primarily  and  the 
homo  secondarily  ;  with  our  conscious  rather  than  our  unconscious  per- 
sonality ;  with  the  lively  and  muddled  but  picturesque  shows  of  things, 
rather  than  their  deep,  serene,  unostentatious  reality.  In  a  word, 


230  APPENDIX. 

civilization,  not  society,  is  Carlyle's  ideal  of  our  eternal  destiny ;  the 
enforced  relation  of  governed  to  governor,  of  an  imbecile  quantified 
mass  to  a  qualified  minority,  and  not  the  frank  and  free  commerce  of 
universal  fellow  and  equal  with  individual  fellow  and  equal.  His 
scheme  of  individual  destiny  is  proportionate.  The  individual  is  to  re- 
main a  distinctly  moral  or  voluntary  force,  and  will  never  attain  to  aes- 
thetic or  spontaneous  dimensions.  This  fact  —  let  Carlyle  continue  to 
ululate  as  pharisaically  as  he  will  —  stamps  him  antediluvian  ;  a  very 
wilful  and  wicked  antediluvian  I  admit,  because  he  is  a  sheerly  dramatic 
one :  his  books  being  little  more  than  a  jocund  unconscious  harlequinade, 
in  the  costume  and  coloring  of  our  own  time,  of  the  old  scotch  calvin- 
istic  cant,  now  grown  rococo  and  fantastic,  and  therefore  artistically 
available.  But  he  is  at  least  so  very  close  an  imitation  of  the  original  arti- 
cle as  to  be  out  of  all  relation  to  the  living  intellect  and  living  interests 
of  men.  • 

It  is  profaning  Emerson's  chaste  and  reverent  muse  to  associate  it, 
even  in  thought,  with  the  ignis  fatuus,  or  imp  of  the  bogs,  that  inspires 
Carlyle's  grim  and  labored  facetice.  But  even  Emerson,  who  is  so 
sympathetic  with  all  that  is  pure  and  honest  and  unostentatious  in 
human  life,  even  he  is  much  too  apt  to  confound  the  children  of  the 
bondmaid,  born  after  the  flesh,  with  those  of  the  freewoman,  born 
altogether  of  divine  promise.  Nevertheless,  what  saith  the  scripture? 
Cast  out  the  bondwoman  and  her  son,  for  the  son  of  the  bondwoman  shall 
not  be  heir  with  the  son  of  the  freewoman.  The  gravamen  of  Mr. 
Emerson's  criticism  of  Swedenborg,  as  it  strikes  me,  is,  after  all,  that 
he  is  not  a  spiritual  Montaigne ;  or  that  in  the  gossip  he  gives  us  about 
Cicero  and  Aristotle  he  drops  out  the  native  flavor  of  those  worthies, 
and  substitutes  a  regenerate  one.  But  this  is  being  too  fastidious.  For 
plainly,  if  these  men  are,  as  Swedenborg  holds,  the  respectable  men 
they  are  in  point  of  spiritual  stature,  because  they  are  more  and  not 
less  inspired  by  the  common  life  of  man  than  it  falls  to  every  one's 
lot  to  be,  were  it  not  better  for  us  to  hear  of  their  having  made  that 
grand  discovery,  and  demeaning  themselves  accordingly,  than  to  find 
them  turning  out  mere  immortal  mummies,  so  bent  upon  keeping  up 
their  stale  and  vapid  natural  identity  as  to  forego  all  hope  of  attaining 
to  a  true  spiritual  individuality  ?  To  be  sure,  if  the  principle  of  force 
or  identity  in  Cicero  and  Aristotle  were  more  potent  than  that  of  in- 
dividuality or  freedom,  so  that  these  men  were  really  something  in 
themselves,  and  not  as  they  stood  objectively  affected  to  the  common 
mind,  then,  of  course,  Swedenborg  was  an  ass  for  showing  them  stripped 
of  their  personal  prestige,  and  consenting  to  sink  their  fate  in  that  of 
the  ordinary  riffraff  of  mankind.  But  I  have  no  belief  in  that  hypoth- 


APPENDIX.  231 

esis,  and  I  would  not  exchange  the  perspicacious  Swedenborg,  accord- 
ingly, against  a  shipload  of  gossiping  Montaignes.  Nothing  has 
grown  so  inwardly  false  to  me  as  this  superstition  of  a  distinctive 
private  or  personal  worth  in  men.  I  am  sure  that  if  I  shall  ever 
have  the  chance  offered  me  to  see  any  most  distinguished  man  I  please 
in  the  annals  of  the  race,  I  shall  gladly  pretermit  every  one  who 
has  ever  been  noted  for  genius,  or  virtue,  or  wit,  or  mere  gift  of  any 
kind,  and  tasten  inexorably  upon  the  interesting  person  of  whom  nothing 
whatever  is  known,  not  even  his  name,  but  that  "  he  was  tired  of  hear- 
ing Ari slides  called  the  just."  That  man,  I  am  not  ashamed  to  own,  chal- 
lenges a  perennial  freshness  to  my  imagination,  which  lifts  him  "  above 
all  Greek,  above  all  Roman  fame."  "  What  constitutes,"  says  Sweden- 
borg, "  the  eminency  or  excellence  of  life  in  every  member,  orgap,  and 
viscus  of  the  body,  is  that  nothing  is  proper  to  any  of  them  unless  it 
be  common:  thus  that  in  every  particular  thing  is  contained  the  idea  of 
the  whole."  *  But  this  is  infinitely  more  true,  so  to  speak,  of  life  in  its 
spiritual  aspect,  or  in  the  social  body.  For  in  the  social  evolution  of 
humanity,  —  which  is  the  lord's  second  or  spiritual  advent,  —  no  in- 
dividuality will  ever  get  itself  honored,  or  even  recognized,  which  does 
not  more  or  less  universalize  the  subject,  by  enfeebling  his  moral  or 
subjective  consciousness  and  inflaming  his  aesthetic  or  objective  one. 

And  here  let  me  say  one  word  more  to  the  address  of  any  one  whom 
it  may  concern. 

I  have  shown  in  the  preceding  essay  that,  whereas  morality  is  com- 
monly reputed  to  be  an  attribute  of  our  specific  manhood,  identifying 
every  man  with  himself  alone,  and  individualizing  him  both  from  God 
and  his  kind,  it  is  in  truth  an  attribute  of  human  nature  exclusively, 
identifying  every  man  therefore  with  every  other  man,  while  it  indi- 
vidualizes or  separates  him  from  God  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  brute  on 
the  other.  We  suppose  it  to  characterize  man  spiritually,  or  in  so  far 
forth  as  he  is  inwardly  at  one  with  God  and  himself;  whereas  it 

*  See  the  beautiful  little  treatise  on  the  Divine  Love  at  the  end  of  the  Apocalypse 
Explained.  "  They  who  belonged,"  says  Swedenborg,  Arcana,  1115,  "to  the  most 
ancient  church,  called  Man  or  Adam,  are  above  the  head  in  the  Maximus  Homo, 
and  dwell  together  in  the  utmost  happiness.  They  told  me  that  others  came  to 
them  very  seldom,  except  at  times  some  who  do  not  come  from  this  earth,  but,  as 
they  expressed  it,  from  the  universe."  Delicious  people !  And  what  a  ravishing 
glimpse  is  here  caught  of  the  soul's  future  possibilities,  if  one  will  only  stand  faith- 
fully by  the  soul,  and  not  give  up  the  tradition  of  such  a  thing  out  of  deference  to 
the  grovelling  senses  !  Should  any  traveller  tell  us  of  a  tribe  so  profoundly  human, 
or  largely  impersonal  as  this,  dwelling  in  the  heart  of  Asia  or  Africa,  what  could 
hinder  us  making  off  to  them  at  once  ?  But  Swedenborg's  books  teem  with 
similar  incitements  to  cultivated  hope  and  expectation. 


232  APPENDIX. 

characterizes  him  only  naturally,  or  in  so  far  as  he  is  inwa.rdly  at  war 
with  all  higher  and  all  lower  things.  In  short  I  have  shown  that  while 
morality  endows  man  with  a  subjective  or  phenomenal  consciousness, 
with  a  quasi  or  provisional  selfhood,  adapted  to  the  needs  of  an  imma- 
ture society  among  men,  there  is  not  the  least  spiritual  or  living  truth, 
the  least  objective  reality,  in  this  selfhood  :  the  whole  spiritual  import 
of  it  being  to  foreshadow  the  divine  natural  humanity,  or  furnish  a 
literal  form,  a  symbolic  or  figurative  expression,  to  the  utterly  unsus- 
pected truth  of  God's  essential  and  exclusive  manhood,*  and  I  have 
also  shown  that  Christianity  expresses  the  cordial  and  intimate,  but  un- 
suspected, union  which  binds  together  these  divided  spheres  ;  the  sphere 
of  our  real  or  objective  being,  and  that  of  our  phenomenal  or  subjective 
existence.  It  reports,  in  fact,  such  a  strict  relation  of  cause  and  effect, 
of  substance  and  shadow,  subsisting  between  the  spiritual  and  natural 
worlds,  as  that  the  highest,  most  interior,  and  incommunicable  secrets 
of  creative  order  stand  faithfully,  though  of  course  inversely,  imaged 
in  every  familiar  feature  of  created  experience. 

Now  if  all  these  things  be  true  —  i.  e.  the  finiting  force  I  have  as- 
signed to  morality  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  infiniting  force  I  have 
assigned  to  Christianity  on  the  other  —  then  it  seems  to  me  evident 
that  we  have  an  a  priori  right  to  expect,  nay,  to  demand,  some  critical 
moment  in  the  race's  progress,  in  which  these  contrasted  movements 
shall  actually  concur,  and  vibrate  thenceforward  in  unison ;  some  me- 
ridian hour  which  shall  lick  up  the  shadow  in  the  substance,  or  marry 
thenceforth  whatsoever  is  most  phenomenal  in  human  experience  with 
whatsoever  is  most  real;  some  pivotal  life  or  personality,  in  short, 
which  shall  bring  the  ritual  or  representative  church  to  an  end,  by 
revealing  the  infinite  divine  substance  which  has  hitherto  been  hid  in 
finite  human  form,  and  stamping  God  and  man  thenceforth  indissolubly 
one.  I  say,  that  these  our  intellectual  data  being  true,  we  have  an  in- 
contestable logical  right  to  demand  this  historic  achievement,  and  to 
demand  it  moreover  in  duplex  historic  form  :  i.  e.  first,  in  literal,  nega- 
tive, or  obscure  form,  answering  to  our  natural  or  superstitious  concep- 
tion of  God  as  a  finite,  or  moral  and  personal  being,  having  interests 
essentially  at  variance  with  those  of  the  vast  mass  of  mankind;  second, 
in  spiritual,  positive,  or  glorified  form,  answering  to  our  regenerate  or 
cultivated  conception  of  God  as  an  infinite  or  essentially  social  and  im- 
personal being,  all  whose  interests  are  identical  with  those  of  the  vilest 
worm  that  crawls,  and  whose  providence  extends  to  every  insensate 

*  Human  nature,  in  its  enforced  subjection  to  animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral,  is 
a  literal  type  or  shadow  of  the  subjection  which  the  divine  nature  is  obliged  to 
undergo  to  the  human,  in  the  process  of  man's  spiritual  creation  and  redemption. 


APPENDIX.  233 

stone  that  rests  in  its  place  or  rolls.  The  plenary  revelation  of  the 
creative  name,  which  was  intended  by  the  church,  is  manifestly  contin- 
gent upon  this  duplex  historic  issue.  For  the  church  in  literal  form 
(the  Jewish  type)  supplies  at  best  but  a  negative  witness  of  God  in  the 
earth,  inasmuch  as  it  shows  the  woman  in  our  nature  under  law  to 
the  man,  the  vir  subject  to  the  homo,  freedom  prostrate  to  force,  the  in- 
dividual life  utterly  servile  to  the  common  life;  whereas  in  true  or 
spiritual  order  (the  Christian  type)  the  individual  element,  or  what  the 
subject  is  in  relation  to  the  infinite,  is  primary  and  commanding,  while 
the  universal  element,  or  what  the  subject  is  in  relation  to  the  finite,  is 
altogether  secondary  and  subservient. 

Well,  what  Swedenborg's  books  practically  teach  us  is,  that  this  last 
decisive  hour  of  destiny  has  actually  sounded,  and  that  it  is  big  with  in- 
calculable issues  both  to  the  race  and  the  individual.  His  doctrine  of 
God's  natural  manhood  shows  us  this  grand  pivotal  life  or  personality 
in  man,  becoming  at  last  enthroned  to  our  rational  recognition,  in  the 
truth  of  the  broadest  human  society,  fellowship,  or  equality  of  man  with 
man  upon  the  earth.  Can  I  not  then  persuade  some  fresher  sinews 
than  mine  to  enlist  in  the  study  of  Swedenborg  where  I  leave  off,  and 
patiently  run  the  principles  he  announces  of  God's  spiritual  administra- 
tion into  every  detailed  natural  application  demanded  by  men's  enlarg- 
ing faith  and  hope  ?  It  is  of  course  easy,  with  our  sensuous  and  child- 
ish preconceptions  of  the  divine  majesty,  to  slight  the  prodigious  suc- 
cor and  expansion  which  Swedenborg's  books  bring  to  our  husk-fed 
and  famished  intellect.  But  no  one,  it  seems  to  me,  ought  ever  to 
open  Swedenborg's  writings,  whose  heart  and  whose  head  have  not 
been  sufficiently  revolted  both  by  the  awful  horrors  of  our  existing 
civilization,  and  the  merciless  complacent  moralism  of  our  religious  and 
literary  teachers,  to  endow  him  with  some  original  and  independent  in- 
sight. I  have  no  fear  that  any  person  whose  heart,  especially,  has 
ever  been  frankly  exercised  upon  any  problem  of  human  origin  or  des- 
tiny, will  long  be  disappointed  in  Swedenborg's  lore.  I  would  counsel 
every  such  person,  to  begin  with,  to  dismiss  all  he  has  ever  heard  of 
the  author  himself,  either  from  reputed  friend  or  foe,  and  insist  simply 
upon  ascertaining  for  himself  what  is  meant  by  his  doctrine  of  the 
lord,  or  the  divine  NATURAL  humanity ;  for  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
worth  discovering  in  Swedenborg,  which  does  not  plainly  owe  all  its 
attraction  to  that  commanding  truth.  And  in  order  perfectly  to  grasp 
this  truth,  let  him  start  in  all  his  investigations  from  the  axiom  which, 
however  poorly,  I  have  endeavored  in  the  text  to  illustrate  to  his  im- 
agination, namely,  that  creation  is  made  up  to  the  creature's  experience 
of  three  successive  stages,  one  primary  or  essential,  another  mediatory 


234  APPENDIX. 

or  existential,  and  a  third  the  conjoint  issue  of  these  two,  which  is  final 
or  characteristic :  the  first  stage  constituting  a  centrifugal  movement, 
determined  by  the  need  the  creature  is  under  to  be  subjectively  pro- 
nounced or  made  self-conscious ;  the  second  a  centripetal  movement, 
determined  by  his  objective  or  spiritual  reaction  upon  himself,  or  the 
need  he  feels  himself  under  to  be  reunited  to  his  creative  source;  and 
the  third  a  strictly  orbitual  movement,  presenting  the  cordial  synthesis 
or  living  fusion  of  these  two,  and  full  consequently,  itself,  of  immortal 
peace  and  power.  In  other  words,  let  him  diligently  remember  that 
creation  wears  first  of  all  a  mask  of  necessity  —  i.  e.  of  fatality,  sav- 
agery, or  poverty  —  constituted  by  the  enforced  humiliation  of  creative 
substance  to  created  form  ;  by  the  compression  of  the  homo  to  the  com- 
pass of  the  vir ;  by  the  subjugation  of  the  wide  weltering  chaos  of 
mineral,  vegetable,  and  animal  existence  to  the  dimensions  of  the  cos- 
mos which  is  man's  compact  city  or  home ;  by  the  reduction  in  short  of 
man's  physical  or  unconscious  being  to  the  measure  and  pattern  of  his 
moral  or  personal  consciousness :  and  subsequently  to  that,  a  free,  con- 
'tingent,  cultivated,  and  affluent  appearance,  constituted  by  the  creature's 
reaction  towards  the  creator,  or  the  "desire"  of  the  woman  to  the  man, 
of  the  vir  to  the  homo :  and  then  finally  a  harmonic,  peaceful,  sab- 
batical aspect,  constituted  by  the  marriage  of  these  opposing  move- 
ments, or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  by  the  conversion  of  man's  natural 
or  subjective  force  into  a  spiritual  or  objective  one,  which  means  his 
redemption  out  of  a  loose  or  profligate  natural  selfhood  into  a  chaste 
regenerate  one,  out  of  fierce  physical  want  and  squalor  into  social  plenty 
and  refinement,  and  therefore  out  of  a  petty  moral  and  finite  form  of 
consciousness,  into  a  grandly  assthetic  and  infinite  one. 


NOTE  G.     Page  183. 

I  AM  prone,  on  occasion,  to  bear  falsewitness,  to  steal,  to  commit 
adultery  and  murder;  and  the  world  thereupon  argues  that  I  am 
inwardly  or  spiritually  as  depraved  as  these  actions  report  me  to  be, 
and  so  forthwith  consigns  me  to  the  devil,  that  is,  to  the  jailer  or  hang- 
man. In  other  words,  it  looks  upon  my  doing  as  determined  by  my 
previous  being,  and  hence  feels  itself  authorized  to  stamp  this  injurious 
being  out.  But  this  judgment  is  childish,  and  the  action  based  upon  it 
both  frivolous  and  cruel.  Doubtless  my  inherited  physical  and  moral 
temperament  inclines  me  to  do  these  odious  things,  whenever  I  can  do 
them  unobserved ;  but  my  inherited  temperament  is  what  I  am  only  in 


APPENDIX.  235 

the  intensest  solidarity  with  my  kind,  or  through  that,  with  all  animal, 
all  vegetable,  and  all  mineral  existence,  and  before  I  have  attained  to 
distinctively  divine,  which  is  individual,  or  spiritual,  form.  What  I  am 
in  common  with  all  moral  and  all  physical  existence  leaves  me  void  of 
spiritual  quality,  leaves  me  a  form  of  sheer  passivity  to  the  instreaming 
creative  force  of  things,  and  hence  of  mere  boundless  or  unconscious 
cupidity.  And  what  conscience,  or  the  voice  of  God  in  my  bosom, 
does  for  me  in  forbidding  me  to  bear  falsewitness,  or  to  do  any  other 
evil  thing,  is  simply  to  divinize  or  spiritualize  my  consciousness,  by 
arresting  this  overwhelming  passivity  to  my  experience,  or  identifying 
it  no  longer  with  myself,  but  exclusively  with  my  inherited  nature. 
When  conscience  forbids  me  to  do  evil,  it  virtually  says  to  me :  "Human 
nature  is  inwardly  or  spiritually  enfranchised,  i.  e.  is  separated  from  all 
lower  natures,  in  being  a  divine  habitation.  But  man  (the  vir)  is  alto- 
gether unconscious  of  this  fact,  being  under  dominion  exclusively  to  his 
animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral  consciousness  (the  homo)  ;  so  that  unless 
he  were  made  vividly  to  feel  the  death  he  bears  in  himself,  in  his  own 
body,  he  would  never  be  able  to  renounce  his  natural  genesis,  and  aspire 
to  a  divine  or  spiritual  renewing.  And  this  wilting  or  withering  effect 
upon  consciousness  it  is  my  exclusive  office  to  mediate.  Thus  in  for- 
bidding you  and  all  men  as  I  do  to  steal,  to  bear  false  wit  ness,  to  com- 
mit adultery  and  murder,  and  to  covet  each  other's  possessions,  I  make 
you  each  conscious  of  a  power  of  being  or  suffering  infinitely  transcend- 
ing your  power  of  doing  or  enjoying ;  and  this  power  it  is  which  alone 
allies  you  with  God.  I  make  you  aware,  in  other  words,  of  a  freedom 
or  selfhood  so  completely  inward,  so  wholly  your  own,  as  palpably  to 
disclaim  any  finite  origin,  or  avouch  itself  a  strictly  spiritual  presence 
in  your  nature,  connecting  it  with  the  skies." 

Evidently,  then,  whenever  I  do  evil,  whenever  I  bear  falsewitness, 
and  so  forth,  I  do  so,  not  by  virtue  of  any  characteristic  quality  in  me, 
any  quality  pertaining  to  me  as  a  spiritual  or  cultivated  existence,  but 
only  by  virtue  of  an  unexhausted  remainder  of  that  primal  and  strictly 
communistic  force  which  belongs  to  me  as  a  physical  and  moral  existence, 
and  which  contrives  still  to  overlap  and  disfigure  my  spiritual  manhood. 
My  inheritance  and  my  cultivation,  my  temperament  and  my  character, 
are  two  very  distinct  interests,  which  moreover  never  bear  a  direct  but 
always  an  inverse  relation  to  each  other.  If  I  inherit  bad  dispositions, 
as  every  one  must  do  to  some  extent  who  is  born  of  the  flesh,  and  is 
not  destined  to  remain  a  spiritual  bat  to  all  eternity,  these  dispositions 
must  come  to  the  surface  of  action,  that  I  may  see  them  in  their  true 
light,  and  by  inwardly  loathing  them,  and  outwardly  averting  myself 
from  them,  may  attain  at  last  to  the  free  or  spiritual  individuality  for 


236  APPENDIX. 

which  I  am  created  in  the  lord.     The  civil  power  is  of  course  utterly 
indifferent  to  this  necessity,  and  may  therefore  degrade,  or  imprison,  or 
kill  me  at  its  pleasure,  for  it  is  the  steward  of  God  in  the  earth,  and 
all  power  is  committed  to  it.     But  it  is  an  essentially  corrupt  or  unjust 
steward,  and  it  will  never  conciliate  the  divine  approbation  consequently, 
until  it  consents  to  assume  its  own  proper  share  of  the  responsibility 
due  to  society  for  our  existing  crime  and  vice,  by  calling  every  one  of 
its  lord's  debtors  to  it  and  saying  to  the  first,  How  much  owest  thou 
unto  my  lord  ?     An  hundred  measures  of  oil  ?     Take  thy  bill,  and  sit 
down  quickly,  and  write  fifty ;  and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the  list.     No 
disinterested  student  of  Swedenborg  can  help  perceiving  that  our  moral 
force  is  just  as  truly  organic  as  our  physical  one,  being  utterly  con- 
tingent upon  the  relations  we  are  under  to  the  world  of  spirits,  by  virtue 
of  our  existing  civic  and  ecclesiastical  organization.     And  if  this  is  the 
case,  how  exquisitely  absurd  it  is  to  go  on  confounding  a  man's  spiritual 
and  moral  character,  or  attributing   the  good  and  evil,  which  belong 
exclusively  to  his  nature  or  inheritance,  to  himself,  that  is,  to  his  char- 
acter or  culture !     We  have,  according  to  Swedenborg,  absolutely  no 
freedom  or  selfhood,  either  physical  or  moral,  "  as  selfhood  is  commonly 
conceived,"  but  only  the  appearance  of  such  a  thing,  inasmuch  as  all 
our  power,  sensational  and  emotional,  all  our  appetite  and  passion,  all 
our  affection  and  thought,  all  our  will  and  understanding,  are  an  influx 
to  us  every  moment  from  spiritual  association,  giving  us  each  a  quasi 
individuality  indeed,  or  a  reality  to  his  own  consciousness,  but  restrict- 
ing the  entire  truth  of  the  phenomenon  to  his  unconscious  solidarity 
with  all  other  men.     How  imperative  then  the   obligation  upon  our 
existing  divine  stewardship,  whether  it  call  itself  church  or  state,  or 
both,  instantly  to  legitimate  all  mankind,  good  and  evil,  white  and  black, 
rich  and  poor  alike,  or  give  every  man  of  woman  born  equal  social 
recognition,  by  frankly  assuming  to  itself  all  the  merit  and  demerit  of 
their  physical  and  moral  diversities.     No  doubt  if  the  steward  could 
only  be  got  to  feel  his  iniquity  in  the  premises,  and  do  at  last  what 
divine  justice  stringently  demands  of  him,  he  would  find  men   glad 
enough  to  receive  him  into  their  houses,  when  he  is  definitively  put  out 
of  his  stewardship.     That  is  to  say,  when  once  human  society  is  fairly 
inaugurated,  by  every  man  becoming  endowed  with  an  equal  interest 
in  it,  then  every  man  will  be  a  law  unto  himself,  and  will  spiritually 
execute  justice  and  judgment  upon   himself,  whenever  he  thinks  a 
thought,  or  feels  a  desire,  of  inequality  with  respect  to  the  meanest 
man  that  lives. 

The  same  error  vitiates  all  our  aBsthetic  judgments.     We  invariably 
confound  the  man  and  the  artist,  the  substance  and  the  form,  the  subject 


APPENDIX.  237 

and  the  object,  and  hold  with  Horace  that  the  poet  is  what  he  is  ab- 
solutely, i.  e.  by  possession  or  inheritance,  and  not  contigently,  i.  e. 
by  doing  and  suffering.  I  have  a  friend,  an  estimable  man  enough 
in  all  personal  respects,  who  has  a  great  deal  of  artistic  ambition 
without  a  gleam  of  artistic  ability.  He  covers  any  amount  of  can- 
vas during  the  year,  as  if  only  to  demonstrate  that  the  ambition  to 
excel  in  any  pursuit  is  always  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  the  corresponding 
power.  "  I  have  it  in  me,  however,"  he  cries  aloud  every  year  with 
new  emphasis,  "  and  by  heaven  it  shall  come  out."  His  friends,  alarmed 
at  this  unprincipled  perseverance,  remonstrate  with  him  to  this  effect : 
People  who  have  it  in  them,  as  you  say,  are  never  tempted  to  swear  by 
heaven,  or  by  anything  else,  that  it  shall  come  out ;  for  it  comes  out  as 
infallibly  as  the  small-pox,  and  always  leaves  them  a  mortifying  spec- 
tacle to  themselves  ever  after,  so  fatal  is  the  eruption  apt  to  prove  to 
their  previous  self-conceit,  or  conception  of  their  own  power.  The  man 
who  starts  from  a  lively  conviction  of  his  own  genius  will  probably 
never  succeed  in  impressing  anybody  else  with  a  similar  conviction. 
Our  current  magazine  literature,  which  in  great  part  is  a  mere  flatulent 
appreciation  of  distinguished  names,  has  misled  you.  It  has  at  all 
events  helped  if  not  prompted  you  to  construe  your  love  of  fame  into 
genius.  You  have  been  wilfully  bent  all  these  long  years  upon  proving 
yourself  a  painter.  But  no  painter  worth  naming  thinks  of  vindicating 
himself  in  his  picture,  but  only  what  is  infinitely  distinct  and  aloof  from 
himself.  No  painter,  whose  soul  is  docile  to  the  inspiration  of  art,  ever 
dreams  that  it  is  the  painter  who  begets  the  picture,  but  is  sure  rather 
that  the  picture  begets  the  painter.  The  poet  does  not  pretend  to  make 
his  poem,  unless  he  is  a  fop  to  begin  with ;  the  poem  it  is  that  with  in- 
finite maternal  ado  makes  him,  educates  him  out  of  his  puerile  vanity, 
and  nurses  him  up  at  last  into  poetic  faculty.  Painter  and  picture, 
poet  and  poem,  are  rigidly  correlated,  or  exist  only  by  each  other's 
permission,  like  subject  and  object.  But  it  ought  to  be  rooted  in  your 
conviction  that  the  objective  element  in  existence  or  action  is  alone 
real,  while  the  subjective  element  is  altogether  phenomenal.  Shake- 
speare's dramas  were  infinitely  beyond  Shakespeare  himself,  infinitely 
beyond  his  own  power  to  produce.  How  otherwise  should  Shakespeare 
himself  have  so  completely  faded  in  all  subjective  or  personal  regards  out 
of  men's  memory?  He  is  even  getting  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  myth- 
ologic  personage.  No  one  from  knowing  the  man  Shakespeare  all  his 
days  could  form  the  least  prognostic  of  his  poetic  genius,  least  of  all 
Shakespeare  himself.  No  man  is  a  hero  to  his  friends,  unless  his  friends 
start  with  a  low  conception  of  the  heroic  quality.  The  moral  of  it  all 
is,  dear  friend,  that  art  is  a  literally  divine  life  in  man,  and  that  the 


238  APPENDIX. 

artist  himself  contributes  absolutely  nothing  to  it,  but  is  in  all  cases  its 
unlimited  servant,  a  beggarly  dependant  upon  its  sovereign  mercy ;  a 
veritable  Lazarus  in  fact  sitting  at  its  gate  covered  with  the  sores  of 
his  own  peccant  vanity,  and  asking  to  be  fed  of  the  crumbs  that  fall  from 
its  table. 


NOTE  H.    Page  191. 

No  doubt  the  literal  supernatural  deserves  the  intellectual  discredit 
which  is  fast  overtaking  it ;  that  technical  supernatural  which  postulates 
nature's  original  objectivity  to  God,  only  for  the  purpose  of  alleging  a 
posthumous  subjective  conflict  between  them.  Our  knowledge,  properly 
so  called,  is  limited  to  natural  existence,  or  the  field  of  the  senses  ;  and 
however  devoutly,  therefore,  we  may  believe  in  supernatural  existence, 
it  is  evident  that  it  can  never  fall  within  the  compass  of  our  proper 
knowledge,  save  in  the  light  of  a  revelation  ;  since  its  pretension  to  do 
so  would  amount  to  the  destruction  of  our  natural  faculty  of  knowing. 
If  the  supernatural  can  become  known  to  us  in  an  outward  or  sensible 
way,  as  we  know  natural  things,  then  of  course  all  our  knowledge  — 
which  proceeds  only  upon  the  distinction  of  things — grows  instantly 
unfixed  or  uncertain,  and  the  natural  world  no  longer  serving  as  a  firm 
and  discrete  base  to  the  spiritual,  turns  out  a  bottomless  morass,  which 
forever  swamps  its  heavenly  promise  and  possibilities  out  of  sight.  The 
most  flat-footed  and  flat-headed  materialism  of  the  day,  such  as  that  of 
Carl  Vogt  and  Moleschott  and  Biichner,  is  preferable  in  this  state 
of  things,  as  it  appears  to  me,  to  our  old  and  fossil  supernaturalism,  just 
as  the  melting  of  the  snows  in  spring,  and  the  breaking  up  of  the  ice  in 
our  lakes  and  rivers,  though  oftentimes  full  of  damage  to  private  inter- 
ests, constitute  a  better  harbinger  of  a  renewed  life  in  nature  than  its 
continued  immobility  would  be. 


POSTSCRIPT. 


As  my  book  is  passing  through  the  press,  a  friend  calls  my  attention 
to  some  paragraphs  in  a  recent  english  work,  calculated,  as  he  thinks, 
to  prejudice  Swedenborg's  good  name.  The  work  is  entitled  Spiritual 
Wives,  and  has  for  its  author  Mr.  Hepworth  Dixon.  It  is  a  book  con- 
ceived and  written  under  such  a  palpably  obscene  inspiration  that  one 
must  be  thankful,  I  suppose,  for  the  comparative  pusillanimity  which 
has  presided  over  its  execution.  A  thin  gauze  of  decency  is  doubtless 
furnished  by  the  language  of  the  book,  but  its  whole  atmosphere  is 
odiously  foul,  not  because  the  facts  with  which  it  abounds  necessarily 
suggest  uncleanness,  but  because  the  author's  scent  is  apparently  so 
sensitive  in  that  line  that  he  sniffs  corruption,  where  a  blunter  faculty 
would  shrink  from  suspecting  it.  The  auri  sacra  fames  is  tolerable 
only  within  certain  well-defined  limits,  and  it  is  a  discredit  to  english 
literature,  generally  so  manly,  that  a  person  of  Mr.  Dixon's  fashion 
should  have  been  allowed  to  thrust  himself  into  provinces  of  thought 
and  experience  so  essentially  morbid  as  those  here  canvassed,  and, 
therefore,  so  justly  remote  from  a  profane  scrutiny  and  appreciation, 
without  receiving  an  instant  rebuke  from  the  more  respectable  members 
of  the  literary  guild. 

The  facts  which  Mr.  Dixon  relates  —  if  his  information  can  be  relied 
on,  which  seems  a  very  doubtful  point  —  are  full  of  interest  to  philo- 
sophic thought,  and  do  not  of  their  own  accord  either  invite  or  tolerate 
the  coarse  commentary  and  exposure  they  get  at  his  hands.  Mr.  Dixon 
himself  does  not  conceal  that  the  victims  to  these  delusions  were  emi- 
nently religious  persons,  filled  with  a  fanatical  or  frenzied  thirst  of  the 
divine  approbation.  Why  then  does  he  not  show  the  same  respect  to 
the  fantasies  of  their  sincere  faith,  that  he  shows  to  the  more  common- 
place phenomena  of  the  religious  life?  Why,  for  example,  does  he 
cruelly  revive  the  names  and  private  histories  of  these  suffering  zealots, 
most  of  whom  have  passed  to  their  final  audit,  and  insidiously  appeal  to 
every  denizen  of  the  gutters  to  come  and  hold  obscene  carnival  over 


240  POSTSCRIPT. 

their  graves  ?  I  myself  knew  in  my  youth  two  young  ladies,  sisters, 
whose  name  Mr.  Dixon  wantonly  parades  to  a  mocking  and  lascivious 
gaze ;  and  they  were  persons  of  such  an  exquisite  feminine  worth  and 
loveliness  in  the  estimation  of  all  their  friends,  and  in  spite  of  their 
religious  aberrations,  that  no  violets  of  the  wood,  nor  any  lilies  of  the 
valley,  ever  owned  a  deeper  heart  of  modesty,  or  exhaled  a  breath  of 
chaster  fragrance.  What  a  horror  then  to  encounter  their  stainless 
name  in  this  depraved  book  ! 

If  religion  mean  —  as  it  is  commonly  held  to  mean  —  a  strictly 
personal  tie  between  God  and  man,  then  of  course  the  tie  is  one  ex- 
clusively of  privilege ;  and  I  do  not  see  accordingly  how  any  consistent 
religionist  is  ever  to  stop  short  of  fanaticism  in  his  approaches  to  God. 
Of  course  the  vast  mass  of  religious  professors  are  insincere — i.  e.  as 
Christ  said,  are  unconsciously  acting  a  part  imposed  upon  them  by  cir- 
cumstances—  and  obey  only  the  logic  of  expediency;  but  I  am  not 
talking  of  these.  I  am  talking  only  of  the  sincere  religionist,  of  the 
man  who  feels  himself  so  committed  to  the  religious  instinct  in  his  soul, 
both  for  time  and  eternity,  as  to  take  no  counsel  of  the  flesh,  that  is, 
of  his  ecclesiastical  connections,  as  to  how  far  he  shall  obey  it.  If  I  am 
a  person  of  this  loyal  make,  and  am  actually  able  to  feel  a  good  con- 
science towards  God,  giving  me  an  unquestionable  advantage  in  his 
sight  over  a  sinful  world  and  a  careless  ungodly  church,  I  do  not  see 
how  I  can  help  expecting,  and  hoping,  and  even  craving  that  the  divine 
love  avouch  its  approbation  of  me  in  some  signal  or  supernatural  man- 
ner, —  in  giving  me  exemption,  for  example,  from  the  ordinary  limita- 
tions that  impend  over  human  freedom.  I  am,  no  doubt,  an  abject 
fanatic  and  fool  to  a  spiritual  or  cultivated  regard  in  cherishing  such 
aspirations.  But  no  one  making  a  religious  profession  has  the  least 
right  to  call  or  to  deem  me  one.  For  I  am  a  fool,  not  because  my  con- 
duct is  logically  inconsistent  with  the  intellectual  principles  we  both  avow, 
but  because  those  principles  themselves  are  flagrantly  insane  ;  and 
here  he  and  I  are  under  the  same  condemnation.  Such  is  the  palpable 
and  pitiless  logic  of  the  situation.  Whatj  then,  is  the  remedy  ?  Surely 
not  to  trample  me  under  the  hoofs  of  your  clownish  envy  and  hypocritical 
commiseration,  but  patiently  to  show  me  that  I  fatally  misconceive  the 
aim  of  all  true  religious  discipline,  which  is  not  to  give  me  a  sense  of 
safe  and  pleasurable  personal  relations  with  God,  but  on  the  contrary 
so  to  inflame  a  sense  of  personal  hostility  to  him  in  my  bosom,  that  my 
otherwise  implacable  self-love  may  feel  itself  remorselessly  slain  in  its 
inmost  fastnesses,  and  I  may  thenceforth  freely  identify  my  private  hopes 
towards  him,  with  the  promise  of  eventual  and  indiscriminate  mercy  he 
has  made  to  my  race  or  nature,  and  to  that  exclusively. 


POSTSCRIPT.  241 

But  I  only  intended,  when  I  began,  briefly  to  stigmatize  Mr.  Dixon's 
absurd  misrepresentations  of  Swedenborg's  writings,  which  he  strives 
by  indirection  to  make  more  or  less  responsible  for  the  disorders  he 
paints.  Of  course  it  is  worth  while  to  say  to  a  man  who  is  ignorant  of 
Swedenborg,  that  there  is  not  one  particle  of  truth,  nor,  perhaps,  in  any 
nice  sense  of  the  word,  of  veracity,  in  any  of  the  insinuations  Mr.  Dixon 
lavishes  on  this  subject.  But  it  is  not  worth  while  to  say  so  to  any  one 
else.  Every  one  familiar  with  Swedenborg  knows  that  he  who  finds 
impurity,  as  to  matter  or  form,  either  in  Swedenborg's  ideas  of  marriage, 
or  of  any  interests  relating  to  marriage,  will,  if  he  look  a  little  deeper, 
probably  come  to  the  conclusion  that  his  judgment  was  premature,  that 
it  reflects  in  fact  far  more  truly  upon  himself  or  his  own  subjective 
states,  than  it  does  upon  Swedenborg,  and  his  objective  teaching.  It 
would  be  amusing  to  hear  the  derisive  shouts  with  which  the  wandering 
Brook  Farm  ghosts  must  receive  Mr.  Dixon's  discovery,  that  that 
movement  was  greatly  due  to  Swedenborg's  influence  upon  New  Eng- 
land thought !  One  is  at  a  total  loss,  indeed  —  so  habitual,  so  reckless, 
and  so  gross  are  Mr.  Dixon's  misstatements  —  to  name  the  people  upon 
whom  he  depended  while  here  for  information.  But  it  is  easy  to  divine 
that  they  must  have  been  a  sort  of  people  unused  to  intellectual  day- 
light, a  sort  of  people  towards  whom  the  inquirer  was  bound  to  gravitate, 
and  not  "  levitate,"  as  the  "  spiritualist "  lingo  has  it.  For  example, 
Mr.  Dixon  condescends,  inter  alia,  upon  my  unworthy  name  in  con- 
nection with  the  Brook-Farmers,  a  community  with  which,  while  it 
existed,  I  was  in  no  relation  whatever,  either  of  knowledge  or  of  sym- 
pathy. He  manages,  indeed,  in  the  brief  paragraph  he  devotes  to  me, 
to  tell  as  many  untruths,  very  nearly,  as  there  are  words  in  the  para- 
graph. He  first  gives  me  the  title  of  "  reverend."  and  calls  me  a  "  Brook 
Farm  enthusiast  "  ;  the  facts  being  that  I  never  belonged  to  any  ministry 
ordained  or  unordained,  and  that  I  almost  never  heard  of  the  Brook 
Farm  association  till  it  failed  to  exist.  He  next  says  that  I  "  scandal- 
ized society  by  making  a  public  confession  of  my  call  to  the  New 
Jerusalem " ;  the  fact  being  that  I  never  heard  such  a  call,  nor  even 
suspected  the  possibility  of  it,  and  never,  therefore,  scandalized  society 
by  confessing  it  in  public  or  in  private  ;  my  idea  of  the  New  Jerusalem 
having  always  been  that  it  is  quite  too  divine  a  life  in  the  earth  to 
make  its  voice  heard  in  the  streets  "calling  "  anybody,  or  even  returning 
anybody's  own  "  call."  Mr.  Dixon  next  proceeds  to  say,  that  I  filled 
many  pages  of  the  Harbinger  with  proofs  of  Swedenborg's  and  Fourier's 
doctrinal  identity  in  respect  to  sexual  morality ;  the  fact  being  that  1 
never  had  a  suspicion  of  any  such  identity,  nor  ever,  therefore,  alleged 
it.  And  then  finally  he  says :  "  In  fact,  this  reverend  author,  a  man  of 
16 


242  POSTSCRIPT. 

very  high  gifts  in  scholarship  and  eloquence,  declared  himself,  on 
spiritual  grounds,  in  favor  of  a  system  of  divorce  which  is  hardly  to  be 
distinguished  from  divorce  at  will."  The  one  grain  of  wheat  in  all  this 
chaff  is,  that  I  have  always  declared,  and  do  now  declare,  myself  in 
favor  of  a  systematized  divorce ;  but  it  is  a  monstrous  stupidity  to  say 
that  this  divorce  is  nearly  equivalent  "  to  divorce  at  will."  No  doubt 
my  idea  might  bear  that  interpretation  to  some  persons,  but  only  because 
these  persons  are  profoundly  sceptical  as  to  marriage  having  any  diviner 
sanction  than  social  convention,  and  hence  suppose  that  to  release 
married  partners  from  the  enforced  homage  they  owe  to  each  other  — 
this  enforced  homage  being  the  only  thing  that  distinguishes  our  present 
marriage  sacrament  from  concubinage  —  would  be  to  destroy  the  mar- 
riage sentiment  in  their  breasts  and  turn  them  into  incontinent  vaga- 
bonds. My  hope  in  enlarging  the  grounds  of  divorce,  on  the  contrary, 
is  based  exclusively  upon  my  conception  of  marriage  as  furnishing  the 
essential  bond  of  the  sexual  relations,  and  as  only  awaiting,  therefore, 
the  disuse  of  force,  and  the  inauguration  of  perfect  freedom  in  those 
relations,  to  prove  itself  also  an  indestructible  bond.  That  a  "  learned 
pig  "  may  turn  up  his  nose  at  this  logic,  and  refuse  to  commit  his  delicate 
interests  to  it,  is  quite  conceivable,  and  is  doubtless  a  salutary  thing  on 
the  whole  for  the  sty.  But  I  have  no  idea  of  the  sty  as  furnishing  an 
architectural  equivalent  to  our  divinely  human  house,  or  home,  which 
is  still  to  come  ;  and  I  have  no  aspiration  accordingly  for  its  amendment. 
In  fact  the  more  uncomfortable  and  uninhabitable  the  sty  becomes  to 
human  beings,  the  brighter  the  prospects  of  that  "  holy  and  beautiful 
house."  *  That  is  to  say,  the  more  we  are  forced  to  suffer  as  mere  porkers, 
revelling  in  the  trough,  the  more  we  are  likely  to  enjoy  as  men  when 
once  we  shall  have  come  to  spiritual  manhood. 

But  enough  of  Mr.  Dixon,  who  is  certainly  not  worth  referring  to  in 
his  own  right,  but  only  as  a  sign  of  our  growing  moral  decrepitude, 
which  tolerates  a  literary  man  in  betraying  so  cynical  an  irreverence 
for  his  own  nature,  as  to  make  its  most  dolorous  plague-spots  an  occasion 
of  pecuniary  gain,  by  using  them  as  a  vehicle,  at  foest,  of  heartless 
rhetorical  grimace,  and  a  provocative  of  lascivious  curiosity.  The  facts 
with  which  Mr.  Dixon  deals  are  facts  of  religious  disease  or  disorder 
exclusively,  demanding,  therefore,  above  all  things  else,  a  sympathetic 
or  reverential  treatment.  The  sauce  of  indecency  consequently  with 
which  he  serves  them  up  no  way  belongs  to  the  facts  themselves, 

*  This  is  the  lovely  spiritual  house  typified  in  Deut.  xxvii.  5,  6,  and  1  Kings,  vi.  7, 
"  And  the  house,  when  it  was  in  building,  was  built  of  stone  made  ready  before  it  ivas 
brought  thither:  so  that  there  was  neither  hammer,  nor  axe,  nor  any  tool  of  iron, 
heard  in  the  house  while  it  was  in  building." 


POSTSCRIPT.  243 

but  is  either  a  helpless  secretion  or  a  calculated  oblation  of  his 
own  prurient  fancy,  the  lord  alone  knows  which;  and  no  one  else, 
I  suppose,  feels  concerned  even  to  inquire.  What  is  palpable  on  the 
face  of  the  book  is  that  it  is  a  mere  pecuniary  speculation;  but  what 
can  one  say  of  a  man  who,  in  the  sight  of  such  woes,  has  no  other 
thought  in  his  heart  than  how  he  can  most  make  money  out  of 
them ! 


THE  END. 


Cambridge  :  Stereotyped  and  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co. 


